Skip to main content

C is for Chipper and Charcuterie


I love the word "chipper."  I don't know another word like it.  Certainly not in my mother tongue of Farsi.  Its different from happy, cheerful or even joyful.  It has another tempo, another sound, another energy...  And its not everyday that you come across someone that through and through reminds you of that word chipper.

Once a year, we are invited to the home of two of Mr. Urban's law school friends, Steve and Suzanne.  If you were to meet Steve today, within minutes you would say that he owns the word chipper.  


Steve is a lawyer and he is great at what he does.  Which means he must be a very busy guy at work.  Furthermore, Steve is married to a successful lawyer.   But somehow these two manage to raise two lovely active boys and run a beautiful home which is always being improved upon: one year its the wine cellar, the next the new patio and fire pit, the next a lovely herb garden and a full-on backyard playground....

UrbanToddler learning to use the BigKid Swing

And this year was the cold smoker, which thanks to it and Steve, we got invited to a Charcuterie party yesterday, where our host had smoked special cheeses and meats which were to die for...

Did I mention that Steve is also a great chef?  He makes the best homemade wines, bakes his own bread, cures the most delicious olives with Meyer lemons, and makes homemade sausage that weakens your knees... 

Fun for US
Fun for Her

When I asked Steve how he was, in the most matter of fact way, he said "Life is great.  Work is great and busy.  The boys and Suzanne are great.  And I get to cook a lot of good food."  He talks, and you just want to be him, even if for a moment.   He is so sincere and nice and chipper, his face always shining with contentment.

And I am sure it helps to be married to a sweet and lovely woman who encourages his talents and hobbies.  As the saying goes "behind every good man is a fantastic woman"...

Comments

  1. My only regret is that we missed the cured tuna and desserts :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow! It's amazing what people will say when you ply them with smoked duck! Thanks for the kudos, Shab!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FORTY THREE YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS AND FORTY DAYS

My life and the life of every Iranian I know,  is bookended by the Iranian Revolution of 1979. It doesn't matter that I was barely old enough to remember this historic event or that I spent the decades that followed it, far far away from Iran, the Revolution of 1979 is a heavy, tacky, cruel bookend that defines who we used to be, who we are and the recurring nightmares and dreams we’ve had for 43 years.  I can pinpoint with certainty the exact month after which a general feeling of displacement settled like sticky dust all over me, my family, my classroom, my teachers, our closest friends, our home, our city… In the years and decades that followed, I never experienced another event that brought such a magnitude of change to the nucleus of life.   Not in Iran, and definitely not after a whole life lived outside of Iran.  Perhaps only recently, the experience of the Trump years and the Covid-19 pandemic, the significant fear, change and frustration that both events brought to our col

On Donald Trump, Crunchy Bananas and our Children... A "How To" on keeping up Spirits and Sanity

The other morning at breakfast, my four year old looked, yet again somberly, at the breakfast before her.  Despite having enthusiastically selected a hodgepodge of liberally salted hard boiled egg whites on the side of toasted hamburger buns, strawberries and vanilla yogurt and a cup of milk, she still could not bring herself to enjoy her breakfast.  Her face was wrinkled, as was mine with exasperation from yet another failed attempt at assembling a palatable breakfast for my picky eater. This one, she is quite the philosopher.  And before I could ask her why she wasn't eating, she said: "Two Things!"  Holding up two tiny fingers.  "The smells of these foods I picked, don't go with each other! And I wish Donald Trump would magically become Hillary Clinton, and the word (world) would be GREAT again".     Despite our best efforts to protect our children from the anxiety of these times, they are alert and picking up on the mood (and the lingo) in the wor

Safa

I have always loved words.  The way some people love shiny new objects.  As soon as I heard a new word, a word that captured my imagination, my energy, my hundreds of unnamed inner thoughts and feelings, I would latch on to it with fearceness, joy and curiosity.  I have also always been intrigued by how regular old words can be used in an unexpected context and evoke bursts of unexpected feelings in the listener, such as laughter, anticipation or tears.  I would search for those words coming out of the mouths of everyone around me, and mentally catalog them like a dutiful librarian, and await the opportunity to say the words with my own mouth out loud to an audience, or better yet use it in an essay where the teacher could grade it, get a kick out of it, or read it to the whole class.      As a child I always loved the Persian word Safa .   For one thing the word sounds so simple, yet sophisticated and beautiful, and for another, each of my memories of hearing this word is stored in th