Speaker 1: Welcome to Bedtime Stories for grown ups in which nothing
Speaker 1: much happens, you feel good, and then you fall asleep.
Speaker 1: I'm Catherine Nikolay. I read and write all the stories
Speaker 1: you hear on Nothing Much Happens Audio Engineering is by
Speaker 1: Bob Wittersheim. If you enjoy these bedtime stories, I think
Speaker 1: you would love my book, also called Nothing Much Happens.
Speaker 1: Readers have reached out to say that besides its beautiful illustrations,
Speaker 1: and besides the stories that you never hear on the podcast,
Speaker 1: its recipes and care rituals, it feels like a tective
Speaker 1: talisman when it sits on their bedside table, it makes
Speaker 1: them feel safe just knowing it's there. Buy it from
Speaker 1: your favorite bookseller, or get an autographed copy wrapped up
Speaker 1: by my own two hands at my website Nothing Much
Speaker 1: Happens dot com. Now let me say a little about
Speaker 1: how this podcast works. Your mind needs a place to rest,
Speaker 1: and without one, it's likely to wander, then race, and
Speaker 1: ultimately keep you up the story I'm about to tell you.
Speaker 1: It was like a soft nest to lay your mind into.
Speaker 1: As you listen to the sound of my voice and
Speaker 1: the details of the story, your mind will settle deeper
Speaker 1: and deeper into rest. I'll tell the story twice, and
Speaker 1: I'll go a little slower the second time through. If
Speaker 1: you wake in the middle of the night, you could
Speaker 1: listen again or just think your way back through any
Speaker 1: of the details that you can remember. This will settle
Speaker 1: your mind back into its nest, and you will sleep.
Speaker 1: All of this is a kind of brain training, and
Speaker 1: the more you do it, the more effective it will become.
Speaker 1: Have patience if you are new to it. Now it's
Speaker 1: time to switch off the light and set down anything
Speaker 1: you've been looking at. You have officially looked at a
Speaker 1: screen for the last time to day. Get your body
Speaker 1: as comfortable as possible, feel the softness of the sheets
Speaker 1: or the heaviness of your comforter, and let your eyes close.
Speaker 1: You are about to fall asleep and you will sleep
Speaker 1: deeply all night. Take a slow, deep breath in through
Speaker 1: the nose and let it out through your mouth again,
Speaker 1: in and out. Good. Our story to night is called
Speaker 1: Friend's Giving, and it's a story about a meal shared
Speaker 1: on mismatched dishes across an old table. It's also about
Speaker 1: a gate connecting two yards, the way crab apple trees
Speaker 1: grow and making new traditions when things change, Friend's giving.
Speaker 1: We'd come up with the idea over the fence in
Speaker 1: my back yard back at the beginning of the fall,
Speaker 1: when I was taking down the tomato cages in my
Speaker 1: garden and my neighbor was raking the first of the
Speaker 1: fallen leaves in his yard. He'd call called out to
Speaker 1: me to tell me that he'd made a soup with
Speaker 1: the last of my tomatoes and basil the night before.
Speaker 1: I'd brought them over in a bushel basket and left
Speaker 1: them on his doorstep, hoping he could make good use
Speaker 1: of them before they went bad. He told me that
Speaker 1: he'd roasted them in his oven until they were blistered
Speaker 1: and just a bit charred, and then blended them with
Speaker 1: broth and sprinkled the top with plenty of freshly ground
Speaker 1: black pepper and ribbons of basil. I dropped my cages
Speaker 1: by the edge of the garden and plucked off my gloves.
Speaker 1: As I strode over to the fence, I propped my
Speaker 1: elbows on its top rail to listen. Tell me more,
Speaker 1: I said, making him laugh. We were old friends, having
Speaker 1: both grown up right here, each of us taking over
Speaker 1: our family homes when it was time and one of
Speaker 1: our shared passions was food. We passed recipes back and forth,
Speaker 1: traded cookbooks, and ate from each other's gardens so much
Speaker 1: we eventually had a gait and stalled between our yards.
Speaker 1: I'd hear him on latching it in the morning, a
Speaker 1: coffee cup in one hand as he picked a few
Speaker 1: cucumbers to go in a salad for lunch. I'd cross
Speaker 1: into his yard in the evenings and fill a colander
Speaker 1: with raspberries that grew all along one side of the
Speaker 1: yard to make into jam for my morning toast. As
Speaker 1: he told me more about his tomato soup and the
Speaker 1: croutons he'd made with a day old loaf of bread,
Speaker 1: it made me think about the bread I used to
Speaker 1: make stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner. The cafe down town sold
Speaker 1: bags of bread ends, the cut off bits that were
Speaker 1: too small or rounded to make a sandwich out of,
Speaker 1: and I would buy a bag or two and cut
Speaker 1: them up into cubes and let them dry on a
Speaker 1: baking sheet or toast them in the oven. I must
Speaker 1: have gone quiet in my Thanksgiving musings, and my friend noticed.
Speaker 1: He propped his arm on his right handle and cocked
Speaker 1: his head to one side to ask what was on
Speaker 1: my mind Thanksgiving. I was going to be different this year,
Speaker 1: I said. He nodded Slowly. Things change, Even the traditions
Speaker 1: we expect to go on forever can be interrupted. And
Speaker 1: I had been mentally stumbling over the idea of the
Speaker 1: end of November for a while. Now I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what it would look like or how it would feel.
Speaker 1: He leaned his rake against the trunk of a crab
Speaker 1: apple tree that took up most of the back corner
Speaker 1: of the lot. Crab Apples are excellent trees for climbing.
Speaker 1: They have long, low branches that run nearly level with
Speaker 1: the ground, and we'd climbed this one a hundred times
Speaker 1: as kids. He shook out a lawn bag and said,
Speaker 1: let's host together this year. We'll find a few friends
Speaker 1: without plans, and we'll have a little friends giving. What
Speaker 1: do you think? The sun came out as we'd been taught,
Speaker 1: and I shielded my eyes with one hand and smiled
Speaker 1: wide at him. Perfect. Why didn't we think of it before?
Speaker 1: He started catching out big handfuls of leaves and dropping
Speaker 1: them into the bag. And as long as we're changing
Speaker 1: things up, let's try some new recipes. We can make
Speaker 1: a couple new traditions. I pulled my garden gloves back
Speaker 1: on and propped my hands on my hips. I've got
Speaker 1: a dozen recipes that I've been waiting to find a
Speaker 1: reason to make. I'll let you know what I come
Speaker 1: up with. I'd gone back to wrangling the tomato cages,
Speaker 1: and when the garden was put to bed, I'd waved
Speaker 1: over the fence and gone in to make a list.
Speaker 1: We spent the next couple of weeks exchanging cookbooks and
Speaker 1: torn out pages from magazines over the fence, calling up
Speaker 1: a few friends who we thought might be in the
Speaker 1: market for a different sort of holiday, and dividing up
Speaker 1: the chores. We'd have the meal at his place. He
Speaker 1: had an ancient dining room table with leaves that could
Speaker 1: double its length if needed. There would only be five
Speaker 1: or six of us, but we'd planned so many different
Speaker 1: dishes we needed the serving space. On Thanksgiving morning, we
Speaker 1: had one last council of chefs over the gate in
Speaker 1: the back yard, each of us a tall cup of
Speaker 1: coffee in our hands and the steam matching our breath
Speaker 1: in the cold morning air. I'd wanted to serve the
Speaker 1: meal on my grandmother's china and had been washing and
Speaker 1: carefully stacking the plates into a deep box to bring
Speaker 1: over in time to set the table. He'd been watching
Speaker 1: videos about how to fold napkins in various fancy ways
Speaker 1: and still hadn't picked a stile. I'd bought candles for
Speaker 1: the table, and he'd made a playlist for pre dinner, dinner,
Speaker 1: and dessert. We laughed as we sipped our coffee, realizing
Speaker 1: that we might have overthought the details a bit, but
Speaker 1: we were having fun and that was the point. We
Speaker 1: clinked cups and hand it back into our respective kitchens
Speaker 1: to get on with it now. It was a point
Speaker 1: of contention between us as to when Thanksgiving dinner should
Speaker 1: be served. In my household, it had always been truly
Speaker 1: a dinner and came around five p m. Just as
Speaker 1: the sun was setting. In his family, everyone had been
Speaker 1: seated at the table no later than one in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: We'd split the difference and asked our friends to show
Speaker 1: up around three. That way, we had plenty of time
Speaker 1: to cook and everyone would have plenty of time to
Speaker 1: digest before bed. At two thirty, I was setting out
Speaker 1: the china. The silverware drawer had been full of mismatched forks, spoons,
Speaker 1: and knives, but that seemed just about right for the day,
Speaker 1: so I carefully laid them out, lining up their stems
Speaker 1: like a butler in an English country house. The music
Speaker 1: was going and the candles were lit. I had a
Speaker 1: foucoctia in the oven that I had made by hand
Speaker 1: pressing divets into the soft dough with my finger tips,
Speaker 1: where they caught olive oil and grains of sea salt
Speaker 1: and strips of sage I'd grown myself. I wanted our
Speaker 1: friends to smell it at the moment they opened the door,
Speaker 1: because there is no scent quite as welcoming as fresh
Speaker 1: baked bread. Soon the first knock came a friend, a
Speaker 1: bottle of wine, another friend, a home made pie, another knock,
Speaker 1: two more for dinner, and a cassarole dish wrapped in
Speaker 1: a kitchen towel to hold in the heat. We'd all
Speaker 1: gotten a bit spiffed up when we toasted each other
Speaker 1: on having a very grown up Thanksgiving. Along with the
Speaker 1: mismatched silverware, we'd leaned into the idea that the meal
Speaker 1: didn't need to look like most other Thanksgivings. There was
Speaker 1: the foccaccia and to go with it. I'd made mushroom
Speaker 1: and wild rice soup thickened with a roue and seasoned
Speaker 1: with lots of fresh thyme. He'd made sheet trays of
Speaker 1: something we were calling Thanksgiving nachos, for which he'd made
Speaker 1: home made refried beans from a recipe that had taken
Speaker 1: nearly twenty four hours to complete. I'd made smashed rather
Speaker 1: than mashed potatoes, by parboiling a lot of smolish Yukon golds,
Speaker 1: then laying them out in the roasting pan and smashing
Speaker 1: them down with the under side of a drinking glass,
Speaker 1: splashing olive oil and seasoning all over, and sliding them
Speaker 1: into the oven. We made Lebanese garlics sauce whipped in
Speaker 1: the food processor to go with them. There was a
Speaker 1: plate of tiny fried cakes we'd made from diced peppers
Speaker 1: and hearts of palm and breadcrumbs and old bay seasoning.
Speaker 1: And there was a huge salad with dark green leaf
Speaker 1: lettuce and toasted pine nuts and marinated red onion and
Speaker 1: the simplest and best vinaigrette that was just a couple
Speaker 1: of ingredients shaken together in a mason jar after much testing,
Speaker 1: ied finely and controversially converted completely from pumpkin pie to
Speaker 1: sweet potato pie. And two were cooling on a shelf
Speaker 1: in the pantry, sitting at the table, passing plates and
Speaker 1: refilling glasses. I was so happy to be where I was.
Speaker 1: It was different. Those long held traditions had seemed like
Speaker 1: pillars holding up the year, and if they changed, if
Speaker 1: they didn't happen just as they always had, it felt
Speaker 1: like perhaps the whole year would come crashing down. But
Speaker 1: I could see now that wasn't how it worked. The
Speaker 1: things that held me, that held my days in place,
Speaker 1: had to do if how I showed up for myself
Speaker 1: and for others, and what I paid attention to. In
Speaker 1: a very simple sense, our days, our lives are what
Speaker 1: we pay attention to, and to night, my attention was
Speaker 1: woven deeply into a feeling of gratitude for friends and
Speaker 1: good food. The light was fading outside as I walked
Speaker 1: back to the pantry to bring out the pies. I
Speaker 1: stopped for a moment with one balanced in each hand,
Speaker 1: and looked out through the kitchen window across one yard
Speaker 1: and over the gate into my own With the sky
Speaker 1: marked bright red from the setting sun. Friends become more
Speaker 1: important as you grow older, maybe because once you're not
Speaker 1: a kid anymore, we don't need friends in the way
Speaker 1: you did growing up as an adult. A real friendship
Speaker 1: is probably the purest relationship a person can have. It
Speaker 1: exists solely because you care about each other. There because
Speaker 1: you want good things for each other. As I listened
Speaker 1: to them talking and laughing across the table, I thought
Speaker 1: of that line of Oscar Wilds, who having friends is poor.
Speaker 1: I turned from the window, ready to bring out dessert.
Speaker 1: I had everything I needed friends giving. We'd come up
Speaker 1: with the idea over the fence in my backyard back
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the fall, when I was taking
Speaker 1: down the tomato cages in my garden and my neighbor
Speaker 1: was raking the first of the fallen leaves in his yard.
Speaker 1: He'd called out to tell me that he'd made a
Speaker 1: soup with the last of my tomatoes and basil the
Speaker 1: night before. I'd brought them over in a bushel basket
Speaker 1: and left them on his doorstep, hoping he could make
Speaker 1: good use of them before they went bad. He told
Speaker 1: me that he'd roasted them in his oven until they
Speaker 1: were blistered and just a bit charred, and then blended
Speaker 1: them with broth and sprinkled the top with plenty of
Speaker 1: fresh ground black pepper and ribbons of basil. I dropped
Speaker 1: my cages by the edge of the garden and plucked
Speaker 1: off my gloves. As I strode over toward the fence,
Speaker 1: I propped my elbows on its top rail to listen.
Speaker 1: Tell me more, I said, making him laugh. We were
Speaker 1: old friends, having both grown up right here, each of
Speaker 1: us taking over our family homes when it was time,
Speaker 1: and one of our shared passions was food. We passed
Speaker 1: recipes back and forth, traded cookbooks, and ate from each
Speaker 1: other's gardens so much we eventually had a gait installed
Speaker 1: between our yards. I'd hear him on latching it in
Speaker 1: the morning, a coffee cup in one hand as he
Speaker 1: picked a few cucumbers to go in a salad for lunch.
Speaker 1: I'd cross into his yard in the evenings and fill
Speaker 1: a colander with the raspberries that grew all along one
Speaker 1: side of the yard to make into jam for my
Speaker 1: morning toast. As he told me more about his tomato
Speaker 1: soup and croutonts he'd made with a day old loaf
Speaker 1: of bread, it made me think about the bread I
Speaker 1: used to make stuffing for Thanksgiving dinner. The cafe down
Speaker 1: town sold bags of bread ends. The cut off bits
Speaker 1: that were too small were rounded to make a sandwich
Speaker 1: out of. And I would buy a bag or two
Speaker 1: and cut them up into cubes and let them dry
Speaker 1: on a baking sheet or toast them in the oven.
Speaker 1: I must have gone quiet in my Thanksgiving musings, and
Speaker 1: my friend noticed. He propped his arm on his ray
Speaker 1: candle and cocked his head to one side to ask
Speaker 1: what was on my mind? Thanksgiving. It's going to be
Speaker 1: different this year, I said. He nodded slowly. Things change,
Speaker 1: Even the traditions we expect to go on forever can
Speaker 1: be interrupted. And I had been mentally stumbling over the
Speaker 1: idea of the end of November for a while now,
Speaker 1: not sure what it would look like or how it
Speaker 1: would feel. He leaned his rake against the trunk of
Speaker 1: a crab apple tree that took up most of the
Speaker 1: back corner of the lot. Crab Apples are excellent trees
Speaker 1: for climbing. They have long, low branches that run nearly
Speaker 1: level with the ground, and we'd climbed this one a
Speaker 1: hundred times as kids. He shook out a lawn bag
Speaker 1: and said, let's host together this year. We'll find a
Speaker 1: few friends without plans, and we'll have a little friends giving.
Speaker 1: What do you think? The sun came out as we'd
Speaker 1: been talking, and I shielded my eyes with one hand
Speaker 1: and smiled wide at him. Perfect. Why didn't we think
Speaker 1: of it before? He started catching up big handfuls of
Speaker 1: leaves and dropping them into the bag. And as long
Speaker 1: as we're changing things up, let's try some new recipes.
Speaker 1: We can make a couple new traditions. I pulled my
Speaker 1: garden gloves back on and propped my hands on my hips.
Speaker 1: I've got a dozen recipes I've been just waiting to
Speaker 1: find a reason to make. I'll let you know when
Speaker 1: I come up with. I'd gone back to wrangling the
Speaker 1: tomato cages, and when the garden was put to bed,
Speaker 1: I'd waved over the fence. I'd gone in to make
Speaker 1: a list. We spent the next couple of weeks exchanging
Speaker 1: cookbooks and torn out pages from magazines over the fence,
Speaker 1: calling up a few friends who we thought might be
Speaker 1: in the market for a different sort of holiday, and
Speaker 1: dividing up the chores. We'd have the meal at his place.
Speaker 1: He had an ancient dining room table with leaves that
Speaker 1: could double its length if needed. There would only be
Speaker 1: five or six of us, but we'd planned so many
Speaker 1: different dishes we needed the serving space. On Thanksgiving morning,
Speaker 1: we had one last council of chefs over the gate
Speaker 1: in the backyard, each of us a tall cup of
Speaker 1: coffee in our hands, and the steam matching our breath
Speaker 1: in the cold morning air. I'd wanted to serve the
Speaker 1: meal on my grandmother's china and had been washing and
Speaker 1: carefully stacking the plates into a deep box to bring
Speaker 1: over in time to set the table. He'd been watching
Speaker 1: videos about how to fold napkins and various fancy ways,
Speaker 1: and still hadn't picked a style. I'd bought candles for
Speaker 1: the table, and he'd made a playlist for pre dinner,
Speaker 1: nor and dessert. We laughed as we sipped our coffee,
Speaker 1: realizing that we might have overthought the details a bit,
Speaker 1: but we were having fun and that was the point.
Speaker 1: We clinked cups and headed back into our respective kitchens
Speaker 1: to get on with it. Now. It was a point
Speaker 1: of contention between us as to when Thanksgiving dinner should
Speaker 1: be served. In my household. It had always been truly.
Speaker 1: A dinner came around five PM, just as the sun
Speaker 1: was setting, and his family everyone had been seated at
Speaker 1: the table no later than one in the afternoon. We'd
Speaker 1: split the difference and asked our friends to show up
Speaker 1: around three. That way, we had plenty of time to cook,
Speaker 1: and everyone would have plenty of time to digest before bed.
Speaker 1: At two thirty, I was setting out the china. The
Speaker 1: silverware drawer had been full of mismatched forks, spoons, and
Speaker 1: knives that seemed just about right for the day, so
Speaker 1: I carefully laid them out, lining up their stems like
Speaker 1: a butler in an English country house. The music was
Speaker 1: going and the candles were lit. I had a foccaccia
Speaker 1: in the oven that I'd made by hand pressing divets
Speaker 1: into the soft dough with my finger tips, where they
Speaker 1: caught olive oil and grains of sea salt and strips
Speaker 1: of sage I'd grown myself. I wanted our friends to
Speaker 1: smell it at the moment they opened the door, because
Speaker 1: there is no scent quite as welcoming as fresh baked bread.
Speaker 1: Soon the first knock came a friend a bottle of wine,
Speaker 1: another friend a home made pie, Another knock two more
Speaker 1: for dinner, and a casserole dish wrapped in a kitchen
Speaker 1: towel to hold in the heat. We'd all gotten a
Speaker 1: bit spiffed up, and we toasted each other on having
Speaker 1: a very grown up Thanksgiving. Along with the mismatched silverware,
Speaker 1: we leaned into the idea that the meal didn't need
Speaker 1: to look like most other Thanksgivings. There was the focaccia,
Speaker 1: and to go with it, I'd made mushroom and wild
Speaker 1: rice soup, thickened with a rou and seasoned with lots
Speaker 1: of fresh time. He'd made sheet trays of something we
Speaker 1: were calling Thanksgiving nachos, for which he'd made home made
Speaker 1: refried beans from a recipe that had taken nearly twenty
Speaker 1: four hours to complete. I'd made smashed rather than mashed
Speaker 1: potatoes by parboiling a lot of smallish Yukon golds, then
Speaker 1: laying them out in the roasting pan and smashing them
Speaker 1: down with the underside of a drinking glass, splashing olive
Speaker 1: oil and seasoning all over, and sliding them into the oven.
Speaker 1: We made Lebanese garlic sauce whipped in the food processor
Speaker 1: to go with them. There was a plate of tiny
Speaker 1: fried cakes we'd made from diced peppers and hearts of
Speaker 1: palm and bread crumbs and old bay seasoning. And there
Speaker 1: was a huge salad with dark green leaf lettuce and
Speaker 1: toasted pine nuts and marinated red onion and the simplest
Speaker 1: and best vinegarrette that was just a couple ingredients shaken
Speaker 1: together in a mason jar. After much testing, I'd finally
Speaker 1: and controversially converted completely from humpkin pie to sweet potato pie.
Speaker 1: And two were cooling on a shelf in the pantry,
Speaker 1: sitting at the table, passing plates and refilling glasses. I
Speaker 1: was so happy to be where I was. It was different.
Speaker 1: Those long held traditions had seemed like pillars holding up
Speaker 1: the year, and if they changed, if they didn't happen
Speaker 1: just as they always had, it had felt like perhaps
Speaker 1: the whole year would come crashing down. But I could
Speaker 1: see that wasn't how it worked. The things that held me,
Speaker 1: that held my days in place, had to do with
Speaker 1: how I showed up for myself and for others, and
Speaker 1: what I paid attention to. In a very simple sense,
Speaker 1: our days, our lives are what we pay attention to
Speaker 1: and to night my attention was woven deeply into a
Speaker 1: feeling of gratitude for friends and good food. The light
Speaker 1: was fading outside as I walked back to the pantry
Speaker 1: to bring out the pies. I stopped for a moment
Speaker 1: with one balanced in each hand, and looked out through
Speaker 1: the kitchen window, across one yard and over the gate
Speaker 1: into my own with the sky marked bright orange from
Speaker 1: the setting sun. Friends become more important as you grow older,
Speaker 1: maybe because once you're not a kid anymore, you don't
Speaker 1: need friends in the way you did growing up as
Speaker 1: an adult. A real friendship, it's probably the purest relationship
Speaker 1: a person can have. It exists solely because you care
Speaker 1: about each other, because you want good things for each other.
Speaker 1: As I listened to them talking and laughing across the table,
Speaker 1: I thought of that line a Boscar wild who having
Speaker 1: friends is poor. I turned from the window, ready to
Speaker 1: bring out dessert. I had everything I needed. Sweet dreams,