Making new friends with Sandy

One of Sandy's favorite blogs was Smitten Kitchen, now in its seventh year. It's an incredibly personable blog, inviting readers into Deb Perelman's tiny New York kitchen and her creative thought process. Sandy followed Deb as she explored various cuisines and ingredients, read the posts that followed Deb through pregnancy, childbirth, and her son's earliest years. I didn't read the blog, but I enjoyed the bits Sandy read me and the recipes we tried together.

Why don't I have photos of Sandy cooking? This is her in the
kitchen, but I think it was meant to show off a new hair color.

One of the many things I've missed since Sandy died is the additional pair of eyes on the web. She had her set of blogs, and I had mine, and we shared the intriguing or important bits with each other. Now that I'm responsible for 100% of my own blog exposure, I always feel like I'm missing something, but not enough that I try to read everything Sandy read in addition to my own collection.

A couple of months ago. I finally set up an RSS feed so that I could access Nate Silver's blog on the New York Times website for free. I opened Google Reader and set up an account. I'd never used it before, but there were several sites already listed there, and each one of them was one that Sandy had frequented.

I was confused at first, thought maybe I'd mistakenly signed into Google as her. But no, I hadn't. Google Reader was just making suggestions that happened to correspond exactly with Sandy's reading tastes. She'd rarely, if ever, used that computer, and I'd not visited the sites on it; sites I visited frequently weren't among the suggestions. I took the list as a welcome communication from Sandy.

Smitten Kitchen was among the suggested sites. I subscribed to the blog, made a few of the recipes in recent posts, and learned almost immediately that Deb had a cookbook coming out and would come to our local cookbook store, the Book Larder, on her book tour. A friend agreed to go with me, and I was psyched to have the opportunity to meet someone whose writing had given Sandy so much pleasure.

Weeks later, I realized that the event required tickets, which had long since sold out. But another event was scheduled for the following morning at the University Bookstore. I emailed my friend, letting her know we were out of luck for the Book Larder reading, but there was a second one. As I wrote, I expected to say that I was thinking about going, but what came out was "Sandy wants to go." I was startled, laughing, and deleted the words. And then realized that the words were accurate, Sandy did want to go, and she wanted me to take her there.

I met Deb Perelman this Thursday morning. She's as delightful in person as she is on her blog. I thoroughly enjoyed her presentation, which was mostly a Q&A session. I also enjoyed talking to the woman sitting next to me; she was lovely and our conversation ranged from her recent retirement and my self-employment to death and grief and cooking and politics and volunteering and learning to let go of our need to make everything perfect in the world. I had another wonderful conversation with a couple of women in the long line to get the book signed. People who like books and cooking are people I'll happily spend hours with.

When you get a book signed at a reading at the University Bookstore, someone comes along ahead of time and writes out the name you want in the signature so that the author doesn't have to ask you how to spell it. So Deb opened the book, saw the sticky note with the name on it, and asked "Are you Sandy?" I explained that no, Sandy died, but she loved Deb's blog and wanted to meet her. (I didn't say that I knew this because she expressed it in an email I was typing; I'm still not completely sure I believe that myself.) I did apologize if it creeped her out to be signing a book to a dead person, but she took it pretty well. She wrote "To Sandy. I'm so sorry I didn't get to meet you," which was just about perfect, and then we talked about orzo, a topic that was clearly more comfortable for her.

I'm incredibly pleased with the outing. I enjoyed conversations and the presentation, and came home with a cookbook I'm looking forward to using. The book has the same narrative style as the blog. I feel like I'm getting each recipe from a friend, after she's told me what she had for dinner last night and how much everyone liked it. Most important, though, I feel like I had the opportunity to give Sandy a gift, something I don't get to do much anymore. I'm thinking maybe we'll do a little cooking together.