A Good Night to Be Alive

This is what I want you to do: tell someone you love them, and dinner's at six. That's the tagline from one of my favorite memoirs on food and entertaining, Bread and Wine, by Shauna Neiquist and this, I believe, is where the good stuff is found.

In 2011, I went to visit my grandma in California for the last time. Each morning I’d drive to the hospital, and then each afternoon, I’d walk back out into the parking lot—the one with the little rose garden--and all I ever wanted to do after a day spent there, with its beeping machines gray hospital beds, and smells of plastic, was to gather friends around a big table and pass heaping bowls of food. To eat and drink and laugh into the fading evening light and celebrate—well, nothing more than simply being alive. In fact, it’s the first thing I did when I got home. A call went out to friends, and just like that we were on my deck back in Colorado, filling glasses of wine and eating grilled salmon with lemons and arugula and parmesan salad, talking about what a gift it was to be doing it.

I love to celebrate. To gather people around my table and deck. To eat simple and stylish food and talk. Every time I do it, I think “this is the good life right here. This is where it’s at.”
I host the most in Summer. When the sun stays up and the strawberries are ripe, with late nights and fire pits, cold cocktails, and kids running wild. That’s my favorite. I like to make intentional space for this type of gathering simply because I can.

Last summer, I asked a few girlfriends over early for French rose and watermelon salsa. My friend Danielle’s mom Kathy had given me the recipe almost twenty years ago, and it’s still a favorite. That evening, we chatted and scooped and clinked glasses until our husbands came looking for us. When they did, we invited them to join, and soon our “girls night” had turned into eight adults plus kids. Salsa bowl empty, we ordered pizzas for dinner while someone pulled out a guitar.

It was a good night to be alive.

                        

Kathy’s Famous Watermelon Salsa

Serves 4

4 cups seedless watermelon, diced

1/2 cup diced green onion

1 1/2 cups diced green bell peppers

3 TBSP freshly squeezed lime juice

3-4 TBSP diced pickled jalapeno (more if desired)

1/3 cup chopped cilantro

Salt and pepper, to taste

Mix ingredients together and refrigerate until cold, 2-4 hours. Can be made the night before.

~Krysta MacGray

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