Thank You For Being A Friend

One of the most glaring lessons I’ve learned over the last year is this: some people are for us, and some people are not. It’s hard, as a simple-brained human, to not immediately equate someone “not being for you” with them being a “bad person.” But the fact is, they may be good (or somewhere in between) and just not be “for you.”

I’m saying this because I’m trying to convince myself. I’m saying this because there have been some friendship speed-bumps along the way, and some of my very favorite turnips have fallen off the truck. I’m saying this because I suspect this may have happened to you as well. 

I had one of these in October that I have thought about every day since. The amount of pain that two intelligent, angry people can inflict upon each other appears to be boundless. And there have also been less dramatic versions of this — the people who have drifted out into another gulf stream, with a heretofore unnoticed divergence in values, who may never drift back. It feels awful, but it’s also been a good reminder that adult friendships are precious — and difficult — and that being friends with people whose values align with yours is really important.

In the time since I wrote to you last, everyone in my quarantine pod and I have had our first vaccination shots. One of them asked the other day if that meant we could go eat in a restaurant, finally. I said I didn’t think it was ethical to do that until we were sure that the people who worked there had ample opportunities to get their own shots. They agreed. It was a relief. This isn’t how everyone has lived through this year. Lots of people have tried to live as normal a life as possible, while occasionally putting a piece of cloth over their mouth and nose. 

There are so many reasons to be mad at each other right now. I had to read the above tweet like four times before I could figure out whether I agreed or felt insulted. In the end, having been one of those people who Followed The Rules more than most, I think this is a pretty stupid thing to say out loud. More than I want to continue to be the best at following what are basically the shittiest set of rules I’ve experienced in my entire life, I don’t want to throw them out the window at the wrong time. The majority of pandemic response decision-making has relied on us trusting our innate sense of safety, and of morality. I’m scared of everything all the time, and this is one of the only years in my life when that has actually been helpful. 

It occurred to me yesterday, while one of my best friends and I were doing something brand new, absurdly labor-intensive, and very intimidating in my kitchen, that it’s also really important to be friends with people who will push you to try new things, who believe you can do them, and who agree with you that you can get pizza instead if your project fails. This is all to say that yesterday, Sofia and I made dim sum for dinner. 

Sofia happens to have the energy and the culinary fortitude of the rat from Ratatouille (she made the most beautiful BBQ pork buns for this dinner), but I promise you that if I can do this, you can do this. And these days in between, when we’re waiting to see what version of the world we get to go back out into, whether that will be soon, whether we will be right, it’s sometimes nice to feel distracted. So let’s talk about Crystal Dumplings.

Shuǐ jīng jiǎozi are named that way because of their beautiful translucent skin, which is a feat that requires a kind of alchemy usually reserved for middle school science experiments — which is to say, it’s more complicated than throwing together an omelette, but a middle-schooler could do it with your supervision. The dough is a mixture of potato starch and wheat starch. You make them into a slurry with a bit of room temperature water, and then you stir that slurry into a cup or so of boiling water in a non-stick pan — the mixture congeals, and turns into a translucent paste, which you then fold more wheat starch into.

From there, you pretty much follow the standard procedure for homemade dumplings, which I had never actually done before, despite having a cute little bamboo steamer for years, because I was too afraid they wouldn’t work and I would get upset. If you do not have a Sofia in your life (and so few of us do), I will be your Sofia. TRY THIS. It was terrifying, and so much fun, and the reward was better than I ever could have imagined. And if you fail, you can get pizza.

I’m not going to write you a new version of the recipe, because Steamed Crystal Dumplings from The Woks of Life is the one I followed, to the letter, and I think you should too.

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You’re reading “Soup and Despair,” a weekly newsletter by Sarah Flynn and Rebecca Orchant. It’s about food, feelings, and surviving the dark times. If someone forwarded you this email, it’s because they love you and they want you to eat. You can subscribe to it too!