Back and At It

After a couple of days in the peaceful environs of the Northern Neck, I have to admit that I couldn't get back to the urban landscape quickly enough.

Fortuitously, I had double-booked myself for tonight so I'd be able to catch up on multiple fronts upon my return.

My primary plans were with a girlfriend I hadn't seen (except for a brief lunch) in eons.

And while lunches are fine, too much time had passed and too much had occurred in both our personal lives to cover a fraction of it in a lunch hour, or even two.

Drawn-out drinks and dishing were in order.

So tonight ended up being the mother of all catch-ups, full of probing questions, anecdotes, surprises and tales of tears.

Man, I love my guy friends, but sometimes it's just got to be two X chromosomes to really give it all up.

All that over-sharing was made much easier by meeting at Six Burner for half-price wine by the glass night.

The pleasures of drinking around the wine list really cannot be overstated, especially at $4 a glass.

To keep up our strength for telling all, we had the arugula salad, roasted beets, goat cheese, pistachios and balsamic vinaigrette because the arugula is so terrific lately.

Everyone I know who is growing it (and kale) right now is raving about the flavor.

Peppery and plentiful, it smelled as good as it tasted and looked.

For sheer decadence, we had to have the snail risotto with garlic (loads!), parsley and Parmesan.

The portion size was perfect for such an incredibly rich dish and, as my friend noted, the only sound we could make while savoring it was, "Mmmm," with eyes closed.

Positively heavenly.

During the chocolate mousse course, we finally deviated from men and the laws of attraction to a slightly broader subject matter, including WW II movies, her conversion to listening to new music (thanks to me, I might add proudly), and our varying sleep requirements (did I ever really go to bed at 10:00? Wow, what lifetime was that?).

It was a much-needed evening with a friend who doesn't hesitate to ask the hard questions ("Would you ever get married again?") and to whom I always answer honestly.

With her, there is no such thing as TMI (at least so far).

Hours later, stop #2 was to meet a trio of friends at Rowland Fine Dining, providing the perfect opportunity to share with Chef Virginia my recent assist in introducing some new fans to her establishment, here. 

She was tickled to hear that her butterbean cakes and, in fact, the whole meal, had so impressed the interesting group of guys (and one guy's dad) I'd sent her way.

The occasion for meeting up with this threesome was to celebrate the 10-month anniversary of the couple portion of the group and to have some girl talk with Virginia and the other female of the three.

We're an interesting group because the couple has been an item for not quite a year now and my girlfriend has been dating "practice men" (her term) since June and has just in the past two months begun what looks to be a most promising relationship.

 I've been back on the menu for less than a month, so we're all coming at this from varying, but still fairly recent, vantage points.

Corny as it sounds, you could say we're all being cheerleaders for each other's personal relationship successes of late, both large and small.

And who would have guessed that I'd even be part of that conversation?

Don't look at me. I'm as surprised as everyone else apparently is.