Sarahletter #6

🍓🥧🍒🍑🇺🇸🤎

Welcome back to Sarahletter. Last week I wrote about being a good houseguest by showing up. In the week since, I have been thinking about what one does upon crossing the threshold, and a part of what I wrote last week has not entirely sat right with me. I seemed to conflate the virtues of attending a party with the virtues of giving one. But attending is not as great as hosting. Our Lord tells us it is more blessed to give than to receive. It is a greater thing to give a party than to benefit from one. The status of guest is elevated only insofar as the guest makes herself a little host.

The job of a host is to make her guests comfortable. But how can she pay attention to fifty, forty-five, forty, twenty, or even ten people? In a loud room, it is difficult to converse with three people. I state the obvious when I say that the only way to see to each guest’s comfort is to rely on other guests—of course parties only work because the guests talk to each other, and are better when the guests want to talk to each other. But can we make our parties fun just by properly arranging the interpersonal incentives?

Let us imagine the perfectly selfish guest: she has no desire to talk to anyone who does not interest her. She feels no pity for the shy girl who does not know anyone. She would like to have new friends, maybe, but certainly not to make them. She is at the party solely for her own pleasure and comfort. In a social scene made up of perfectly selfish guests, there would be no way to have a party where every guest had a shot at a good time except only inviting people who like each other, preferably in even numbers. Selfish guests will manage to ruin even the perfect party, where everyone knows and likes everyone else, and the architecture of the house makes it very clear where the bathroom is. They will refuse to talk to anyone they perceive as lower status and create outsiders in a group that should be friendly.

Thankfully, nobody is perfectly selfish, but even with partially selfish guests, the host cannot personally give everyone a good time, nor can she socially engineer the party into being pleasant. She must rely on her guests to share in her role by counting others as more important than themselves. If parties are to be a place of comfort, each guest must show charity to the other guests. No group endeavor can work unless all the members are looking out for one another. There is no scene without love between its members. There is no love that does not require sacrifice. If anyone seeks to save her night, she will lose it, but she who loses her night will find it. To quote the pagan teacher Ram Dass, we’re all just walking each other home.

Disclaimer: No guest should ever try to usurp the host’s ownership of an event. The only way in which a guest may compete with a host is by the Christian practice of outdoing one another by showing honor.

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Baked a strawberry rhubarb pie and a cherry crumb pie for the Fourth of July. The Lord blessed my shopping and I was able to find rhubarb in abundance at Eastern Market this week.

Strawberry rhubarb pie recipe

Filling (loosely modified from Sally’s Baking Addiction): 2.5c strawberries, 2.5c rhubarb, 1/3c sugar (it was really sour so I might think about adding more next time), 1/4c corn starch, zest of two lemons, a dash of nutmeg, a splash of vanilla.

Crust: Better Homes & Gardens Pastry for Double Crust Pie (I accidentally added twice as much water as the recipe called for which gave a certain “intractable” character to the dough.)

Brush with milk or half and half, top with Turbinado sugar, and bake at 375°.

Cherry crumb pie recipe

Filling: five cups of pitted cherries, 1/3c sugar, 1/4c cornstarch, juice of two lemons, a splash of vanilla. I pitted the cherries by cutting them in half and fishing the pits out. I am sure there is a much better way to do this.

Crust: Crust: Better Homes & Gardens Pastry for Single Crust Pie.

Crumb topping (modified from my grandmother’s recipe for rhubarb raspberry pie): 1/2c flour, 1/2c Turbinado sugar, 1/2c chopped almonds, 1/3c butter, salt, a dash of cinnamon.

Bake at 375°.

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Cooked the perfect summer salad. Since November 2023, I have been dreaming of an arugula salad with peaches, red onions, and goat cheese. In July 2024, I am realizing my dreams. For the first iteration of this salad, i used pan-crisped grocery store ham for produce pickled the red onions in a balsamic-dijon-honey vinaigrette. This was fine, but i realized that the oft-praised “perfect balance” of a good vinaigrette cannot tempt a girl who was raised dunking her bread in plain balsamic vinegar. My favorite version of this salad was the one i made today:

• Arugula

• Goat cheese crumbles

• A peach

• Fresh thinly sliced red onions

• Balsamic vinegar

• Steak

• Salt and pepper

—s