Anita’s Puerco en Salsa Verde

If you’re lucky, you have friends who come up from San Francisco for a girls’ weekend of eating and talking fast together, and they invite you over for lunch.

I’m so lucky.

Anita, Jen, and Jeanne came up to Seattle to eat at some of their favorite restaurants, giggle together, and have some kick-ass cocktails. All three had meetings as well (work never stops) and places to be. We were lucky enough, my toddler daughter and I, to catch them all in one place. Lunch.

On top of that, our friend Helen had been visiting us for two days, and she knows this gang too, so we all gathered in the same room for food.

We talked and laughed while Lu pressed buttons on the cd machine. Somehow she figured out how to make the Fine Young Cannibals cd play, and she started dancing. We tumbled into the living room to join her. For a few moments, everything was joy.

And then Anita announced that lunch was ready. The joy increased.

This is Anita’s Puerco en Salsa Verde. She left out the jalapenos for the toddler. (She’s kind like that, in these small thoughtful ways that knock you out every time.) The ladies had already lunched earlier, because they were going to have a celebratory dinner together in the early evening, one last meal in Seattle before their early-morning flights. But they sat at the table with us and talked as Lu and I put our spoons into the same bowl.

After only a few bites, Lu looked up and crooned to the room: “Yum yum yum!”

We all laughed. Nothing else needed to be said. She was right.

Thank you, Anita.