When I think of dinner time, I generally think of the hours between 5-7:30pm. Growing up, dinner time was always around 6:30pm, as my parents usually got home between 5:30-6pm to start preparing dinner for us. In college, I usually ate dinner between 6-7pm. And once I started living on my own, whenever I’d make dinner plans with friends, we’d typically meet between 6-7pm. This became earlier once Chris and I got together (he has stated multiple times that his preferred eating time would be… 4:30pm!), and then now with Kaia with us, we usually eat between 5:30-6pm.

All the above dinner windows assume that you wake up at a reasonable hour in the morning, so between 5-8:30am. If you are waking up later than that, it’s likely that a 5-6:30pm dinner will be far too early for you. So when I started hanging out with my very nocturnal friend who typically wakes up around 11am-12pm and works into the wee hours of the night, I realized that the way I define “dinner” time is not at all what she considers an actual dinner time. She typically has dinner between 9-11pm. And so when I had previously suggested a 6pm dinner, she said that was “like lunch” for her. Granted, we had never met for “dinner” before tonight, so when we went out for a 7:15pm dinner this evening, she did consider it not lunch, but yes, an “early dinner” for her.

It would be nearly impossible for me to operate on her dinner schedule, though, with a typical 9-5 job as well as a young child at home. And well, I also like to give my body time to digest food before I sleep. So given this, I am happy that we typically meet for her breakfast/my lunch or coffee/tea in the mid afternoon. This seems to be the most winning combination for both of us.

Ever since we visited Indo-Java Groceries in Elmhurst earlier this year, which is just a short walk away from my former apartment in the neighborhood, I’ve been thinking about how I could come back on a Tuesday to have an authentic Indonesian lunch prepared by a very famous, local Indonesian auntie. The Tuesday auntie is the most famous for having home-style, regional Indonesian cooking readily available to locals in the ‘hood for the last 10-plus years. When I told my friend about this, she got really excited, as she used to live in Amsterdam for many years. In Amsterdam, given the history of Dutch colonization of Indonesia, she had easy access to Indonesian food everywhere. But she had forgotten about the mega Indonesian population right in her backyard of Elmhurst! So we decided that this summer, we’d go on a Tuesday and have lunch in the middle of workday… in the back of a tiny Indonesian grocery store.

The yellow folding table was teeny tiny, but enough for two plates and utensils to comfortably sit on top. We sat on blue and red plastic stools. My friend and I shared fish balado, beef rendang, curry egg and tofu, mixed kale, spicy green chili, spicy potatoes in chili sauce, and freshly fried shrimp crackers. The spice was not burn-your-mouth-hot like in Jakarta as I remember, but it was definitely enough to wake you up if you were sleepy! We chatted about work, travel, and our kids as we dug into our little Indonesian feast. This was such a New York city experience, an “if you know, you know” type situation. As we ate, we saw many other people coming in for their to-go lunch orders, as well as a few others who wanted to sit outside and eat. The grocery store owner graciously pulled out additional folding tables and chairs to allow the other diners to sit outside and eat, overlooking the traffic of Queens Boulevard at Grand Avenue. This was truly an authentic New York City experience right in my old neighborhood of Elmhurst, Queens. I loved every second of it, and not just the eating and friends catch-up time. I also enjoyed watching all the in-the-know people coming and going, picking up their pre-ordered food, enjoying homemade Indonesian auntie cooking. This was a real locals experience.

As my friend and I wrapped up our delicious lunch and I had to run to the nearest cafe to take a work call, all I could think of was: I just LOVE New York City. I am thrilled that spaces like this exist, and I love that I have such easy access to it. And I also love that I have friends who can appreciate these types of experiences with,.

An article I read years ago stated that in the U.S., family estrangement is actually more common than we think. It affects approximately 27 percent of adults in the U.S. It could mean you no longer have contact with a sibling, parent, uncle, aunt — anyone who is considered “family.” Since my wedding in March 2016 and after I sent a thank-you email to my dad’s younger sister for coming, I haven’t heard from her at all, nor do I have any desire to reach out to her. My aunt tried to bring her fuck-buddy to my wedding, and I blocked it. So she tried to “get back” at me by showing up to my wedding not only late, but also in jeans. It was clear what she was doing and what kind of message she was trying to send to me and my parents. She wasn’t deserving of an actual thank-you card, so I emailed her a brief thank-you note and decided that would be the end of our connection. I knew she wouldn’t respond, and she’s too stupid and proud to reach out herself. She’s already estranged from her only child, his wife, and their two children, so she was just furthering the family estrangement for herself. She has zero contact with either of her two living siblings, and pretty much all of her blood relatives.

While I was at lunch today with a friend, I found out that she is completely estranged from her biological father. She hasn’t had any contact with him since she was about five years old; the person she refers to as “dad” now is actually her mom’s second husband, who legally adopted her after they got married. She said she doesn’t think much of it since it was so long ago, and her dad now is essentially the only dad she’s ever known, and that’s all that mattered. What it made me realize is that the stat from that article is so true: far more of us have family estrangement than we’d believe to be true. I have a friend who was basically abandoned by both her biological parents as a baby and then again by her dad when she was a teen. Another friend of mine only sees her mom about twice a year even though they live within short driving distance of each other because “she really fucked me up when I was a kid,” my friend said. Her mom was physically and verbally abusive towards her and her brother, and they still have whiplash from this from violent dreams they wake up from to this day.

“Family” is being redefined by boundaries that we are all setting to protect our mental and physical health. It is definitely a step towards aiding in our own well-being.

There are a lot of generalizations I can make about all the people I’ve come to call friends over the course of my last 39.5 years. But one thing that I can say, with almost certainty, is that oddly enough, pretty much none of them love cooking and think about food as much as I do. I have plenty of friends who cook out of necessity. I have friends who try new recipes when I use them because they don’t want the mental load of coming up with things on their own, so they use recipes or do dishes that I think are easy or tried-and-true hits. I also have friends who are either horrible cooks or leave all their cooking to their partners…. or just eat most of their meals at restaurants or via takeout/delivery.

Then I met this friend at a Hot Thai Kitchen event late in 2023, and I realized I had finally made a real life cooking friend. We hang out about once a month, and she is hardcore into all things health and wellness, including an extremely regimented exercise routine that includes heavy weight lifting, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (even competitions). She’s obsessed with food and cooking and loves shopping for produce and local, fresh ingredients. So after we met for lunch today, we strolled through the Union Square Greenmarket, and we browsed endless in-season, local fruits and vegetables. We pointed out things that looked really good or interesting. We touched and evaluated some really beautiful, fragrant herbs, tomatoes, and at least half a dozen different types of summer squash in sizes ranging from our thumbs to half the length of a baseball bat. My friend bought a large haul of three bags worth of fresh produce home.

And then something fun happened while we were there. She told me she had recently gotten really into kohlrabi, and I admitted that I had often thought about buying it, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“Okay, well, we’re solving that problem today!” she exclaimed.

She bought four fat kohlrabi and set one aside for me, along with two ears of corn. She advised me to wash and peel it, then slice it thinly or across a mandoline, and dress it simply in white vinegar, high quality EVOO, and a little salt and pepper.

“It’s so simple and so good!” my friend insisted to me. She said it was a really good, healthy snack, and it didn’t take much for its full flavor to shine through.

And as this all unfolded and I neatly tucked my very first kohlrabi into my canvas bag along with my local ears of corn, I thought to myself… Wow. This was so much fun. This is what it’s like to have a friend who is super passionate about food and cooking, and what it’s like to go to a farmers’ market with her! She not only declared something is delicious that she loves, but once she heard I hadn’t eaten it, she bought it for me and instructed me on how to cook it. I need more people in my life like this!

Tonight, we went out for a quick dinner and comedy show with my friend, her husband, his business partner, and the business partner’s wife. We’d never met the business partner and wife before, and although the meal and time chatting was quick, it was fun to be around new people and see what their life and perspectives are like. Unlike the last time we went out for dinner with Kaia and had a babysitter watch her, tonight’s dinner was really delicious. Jazba, which means “passion” in Urdu, specializes in regional cuisines across India, specifically highlighting street food in India’s dhabas, or roadside shacks. We shared a lot of starters and mains, with highlights being the haleem, a slow cooked goat stew with lentils and taftan bread; a Jaituni fish tikka; and a Goan prawn curry. An unexpected treat was that there were appams you could order as sides, so in addition to garlic naan and lacha paratha, we also got two appams, which were spongy, and fluffy. Everything was packed with flavor, and a number of the dishes had lingering heat that made my tongue tingle. Chris said that he liked this meal as much as he disliked the other restaurant we visited for dinner before our Guatemala trip. The only downside was that as is pretty much the norm nowadays, the meal was expensive; after all the food and alcoholic drinks, tax, and tip, it ended up being about $60 per person. And we were barely at the restaurant for an hour. This is just the cost of eating a mid-range meal nowadays that is not fast casual for dinner.

We broke into two groups because one of the women in the group was craving cannoli before the comedy show, and so my friend and I accompanied her to an Italian bakery nearby while the other three went directly to the theater. When we got there, she asked if she could get a cannoli freshly filled, and the guy behind the counter said that they don’t do that; what you see under the glass, which were pre-filled cannoli, was all that they could offer. So, she dismissed cannoli completely and opted for a lobster tail and some eclairs instead. As we walked out, she said that she refuses to eat cannoli that are pre-filled because you have no idea when they were last filled, and that it could have been so long ago that the cannoli shell was now stale or soggy. And as she said this, my face lit up. I think she is literally the only person other than myself I have met who shares this opinion with me. No one else I know has vocalized this qualm. I think we could get along food-wise.

My friend said later that this person. “is a bit too fancy with food — she wants quality stuff only!” And I responded back, well, can you blame her? Life is too short to eat a bunch of crap, and we need standards! We want food that tastes good. Why should we have to settle? I’m totally with the business partner’s wife on this!