Abbey showed up at my door, and the first thing we exchanged was hugs, the kind where you mean it.
“I’m so excited to see you!” I said.
“Me too!” She was almost bouncing on her toes. “And I have some things for you. I know you’re probably used to everything at Sophia’s, but every time I go there I’m blown away by all the beautiful and delicious offerings. I saw this and knew you’d love it.” These words came tumbling out riding a wave of delighted energy.
She handed me a package filled with long stalks of dried Greek oregano.
“Oh, Abbey, it’s incredible. I don’t know whether to display it or use it or both.”
Design and food are a love language we share, and an animated discussion followed about where it might go and how it might be used. We could have kept going, but Abbey was too excited.
“And,” Abbey said, “there’s more!”
It was a bread she’d discovered on Martha’s Vineyard and fallen in love with. It was tangy and dense and unusual. “My friends brought me some, and I had to bring you some. It’s just so YOU.”
We cut into it right away, toasted it and slathered on local butter. We each took a bite and looked at each other.
“Right?” Abbey said.
“Totally.”
That was the whole conversation, and it was enough. She had been right about the bread, and right about me.
(The bread is from Beetlebung Farm, which you should definitely check out if you find yourself on the Vineyard.)
Later that day, I was talking to another friend who mentioned she might head to the Vineyard at the end of the week. Bread is something she knows and cares about, so I told her about the Beetlebung loaf. She answered with her own Martha’s Vineyard bread story. A gallery owner had started baking four loaves of perfect, idiosyncratic bread a day. She left them outside the gallery in something like one of those tiny free lending libraries that stand on street corners and tuck into neighborhoods. My friend discovered it this summer and became obsessed. That meant she started stalking said bread library. It also meant she couldn’t help telling everyone she knew, and maybe some people she didn’t, about this crazy delicious bread. This, of course, fed the frenzy around the secret stash, which meant less bread for her.
“I can keep a personal secret locked in a vault,” she said, “but something amazing? I can’t. I just can’t. It’s too good not to be shared.”
Sophia, I think, has the same affliction. Sophia’s Greek Pantry, where Abbey found the oregano, is less a store than your favorite aunt’s pantry. It’s full of her favorite things, which now get to be, possibly, some of your favorite things. Some she makes herself, and the olive oil granola, the Greek yogurt and the breadsticks in assorted flavors are absolutely necessary. Others she sources through the filter of what she loves.
There is something immensely generous about offering what you love. It is also exposing, even vulnerable-making, to put your whole self behind something, especially something really particular and really you. So when someone gets that particularity of you, sees it, delights in it and shows up at your door with something they know you’ll love because they know you, it’s pretty special.
Xo Jill