There have been a few, a very few dinners that I have sat where people dress up and the talk is fine and what could be called highbrow, of things that I only know fringes about. Like literature and the history of ancient Rome and the likes. Most of the dinners I go to are more like grab a plate, find a place where you can hold said plate on your lap and if you are lucky, you are near a flat spot that will hold your red Solo cup. Now that’s a dinner party. Sometimes I get to have dinner with friends at a restaurant and the conversations are varied and can run the gamut from what is the best and worst thing on the menu to wondering if the bar will fill a to go cup with wine! And everything in between. Recently I was at just that kind of dinner with two wonderful friends. There are times when you find yourself looking around and thinking about how you can make your escape. I would hazard a guess that we have all been in that seat. Once my other half and I were at a dinner party where lamb was served. Wait. It was mutton. Bad mutton and we were seated on the back side of the table where there was no escape. I looked over and my husband was chewing and chewing and chewing on a piece of his dinner. Finally, he did hold his napkin up and quietly spit out the ball of sheep meat with a shutter. He gave me a look that said, “AARRGGHH.” Then some dinners are so fun. The other night I was invited to have dinner with these two women friends, and it was a giggle fest from the word go. Let me set the stage a titch. My two friends both have had careers where they wore what I call “real people” clothes. Nice business things and they both look great all the time. Me? The farmer, hardware store and machine shop worker? Well, its summer and I wear cut offs and T-shirts in summer. But. Yes, a dress to impress “but.” I do however dress up when I go out to dinner. I wear cut offs and a real blouse. You know, one with buttons. HAHA, then if I really dress it up, I put on socks with my sneakers. Yes, I am a real girl who was put on this earth to enjoy the journey comfortably, not impressionably. In other words, it was a very casual dinner in town. And we all were very at ease with each other. It was so much fun. The conversation zigged and zagged, and the laughter I am sure was heard throughout the roadhouse where we were. I found the best of the conversation was about food. To be more specific, cookies. Oh, but not just any cookies. Not chocolate chip or oatmeal. No, the cookies we licked our lips over are the big pink cookies! Sugar cookies with the pinkest thick icing and multicolored sprinkles. The icing covers the softest, sweetest melt in your mouth cookie. Cookies dreams are made of. Yes, those cookies. We each have good intentions when we open a big pink cookie. We talked of tearing the cookie in two parts. Oh, you have to tear the big pink cookie as they are so soft and luscious, they are not “break apart” cookies. Anyway, it was clearly a conscious thought that we each would plan to eat one half of a big pink cookie per sitting. The realization was that every speck, down to the sprinkles that escaped down the front of our shirts, was gobbled up in one sitting. I found it cool that as we talked, the cookies grew in stature. One noted that the cookies are baked somewhere in Utah. I have no idea if all big pink cookies come from one place. I do know that one of us found a store where they were selling a version of the big pink cookie as little pink cookies that were bite size. Oh, be still my heart. One said she was aware of a place where the big pink cookies were available in packages of twelve in a package, but they were just regular sized in the package. Together we decided that if the big pink cookies were purchased in any other size other than the big pink cookie size and someone would crazily only eat one? Well, that person could not be trusted. Looking around the table I decided that all three of us could be trusted in the big pink cookie supply chain. That’s real big pink cookie friendship. Trina Machacek lives in Eureka. Find her books online wherever you buy books or email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com to buy a signed copy.
