Bacon Jalapeño Popper Cheeseball

Late May. School ends in two weeks. The energy of the house has shifted into the strange, restless terminal phase of the school year — the kids have basically stopped being able to focus on schoolwork but the schoolwork is still officially happening, and the calendar is full of end-of-year events that nobody is enthusiastic about but that everyone has to attend, and the weather has gotten warm enough that staying in school all day feels like a violation of natural law. Diego has finals coming up. Sofia has the end-of-season track banquet on Friday. The twins have field day on the second-to-last day of school, which they have been talking about for three weeks and which Marco is treating like the Super Bowl.

Diego is going to graduate next May. We are now eleven and a half months from his high school graduation. I had not let myself think about that until this week. There is a difference between knowing something abstractly — "Diego is a senior next fall" — and feeling it in your chest at six in the morning on a Tuesday in May, when you walk by his room and the door is open and he is lying on his bed reading a thriller, and you realize that this is one of a finite number of mornings where you will walk by his room in this house and see this exact thing. I counted on the calendar. From today through the day he leaves for Fort Collins in early August next year, there are about four hundred days of him living in this house. Four hundred mornings of walking past the open door. The math is a knife.

I have decided, this week, to be more deliberate about the four hundred days. Not in a precious way — I am not going to make every day a Hallmark movie, and Diego would resent it if I tried — but in a noticing way. I am going to look at him more carefully. I am going to ask him a few more questions than I usually ask. I am going to make myself available for the small conversations that he does not initiate but that he will join if I make space for. The fathering of a senior is not the fathering of a freshman. It is quieter, more peripheral, more about availability than initiation. I am trying to recalibrate. Lisa has, of course, been recalibrating since the beginning of the year. Lisa is, as in most things related to the kids, a step ahead of me.

Friday night I made fish tacos. The end-of-track-banquet was Friday at six and we ate at home at four-thirty, light, because Sofia would be eating at the banquet but the rest of us would be home. Fish tacos with battered cod, slaw, lime crema, salsa fresca. The cod was on sale at the fish counter, the kind of fillet you can usually only get fresh in May, and it had the kind of clean white flake that you can only get from a fillet that was recently a fish. I battered with flour, cornmeal, and a little beer, because the foam from the beer makes the batter crisp, and because the alcohol cooks off in the fryer, and because no, I do not drink, but I will use beer in a batter without theological objection. Lisa was on a day shift that day and got home in time to eat with us. The twins each ate three. Diego ate five. I had two and Lisa had one. Sofia had a quick taco at the counter on her way out the door for the banquet.

The track banquet was at a community center in Aurora. Lisa and I drove Sofia. Coach Lan, the head coach of the girls' team, gave a long speech about the season and named various award winners. Sofia got the freshman of the year award. The team gave her a plaque. She walked up to the podium, accepted the plaque, said "Thank you, Coach," and walked back to her seat. The other parents in the audience applauded. The other freshmen in the audience applauded. Anya, who was sitting at a senior table across the room, applauded the longest and loudest, which was a small kindness I will not forget. Sofia sat back down and did not look at us for a few minutes because she did not want to deal with the emotions on our faces. We let her have her space. We just sat at the parents' table and ate the slightly dry chicken and drank water and quietly watched the kid we had made become someone we recognized but had not yet fully met.

Saturday morning I sat at the kitchen island and worked on the summer schedule. The summer schedule is its own document — a complicated calendar of football camps, girls' running camps, twins' soccer camps, family travel, work shifts for Lisa, the Las Cruces Fourth of July weekend, possibly a college visit to CSU in late summer for Diego to attend a freshman orientation, and the chile roasting trip in September. The summer is short. The summer is loud. The summer is the time when the year actually happens.

This summer is going to be different. It is the last summer Diego is at home. It is the summer before his senior year of football, which is the most consequential season of any high school athlete's life. It is also a summer where I am trying to be present in a way I have not always been present. I scheduled the family for a long weekend to Las Cruces in late June — a real trip, with all four kids, plus Lisa, with Mamá and Papá and the cousins, with chile and posole and the patio at the house I grew up in. I scheduled a backpacking trip with Diego in July, just the two of us, three nights in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the kind of trip we used to do when he was twelve and that we have not done in two years because of football scheduling. And I scheduled a single Saturday in July where I am going to take Sofia to a long lunch in Boulder, just the two of us, because Sofia has not had her father's undivided attention for an extended period in probably a year, and a freshman of the year deserves her father's undivided attention.

Lisa looked at the schedule when I showed her Saturday afternoon. She said, "This is the most thoughtful summer plan you have ever made." I said, "I am trying." She said, "I see it." She kissed me. She went to take the twins to soccer. The road bends. Feed your people. The game is won at the table.

The fish tacos that Friday were the kind of meal that remind you why you cook — everybody at the table, Diego reaching for his fifth, Sofia grabbing one on the way out the door like a kid who knows she is loved. But what I kept thinking about, as I put together the summer schedule that Saturday, was all the gatherings still ahead: Las Cruces, the backpacking trip, the long lunch with Sofia, the cousins on the patio. For those kinds of moments — the ones where you want something on the table before the real meal even starts, something that makes people stop and stand in the kitchen together — this Bacon Jalapeño Popper Cheeseball is what I reach for. The jalapeños carry a little heat that feels right for a family that grew up with New Mexico chile in the blood, and the whole thing comes together fast enough that you can make it the morning of and forget about it until people start arriving.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes (includes chilling) | Servings: 12

Ingredients

2 (8 oz) packages cream cheese, softened
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
3 jalapeños, seeded and finely diced (1 reserved for garnish)
6 strips bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled (divided)
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons green onions, thinly sliced
Crackers, tortilla chips, or sliced baguette for serving

Instructions

Mix the base. In a large bowl, beat the softened cream cheese with a hand mixer or sturdy spoon until smooth and fluffy. Add the cheddar, Monterey Jack, two of the diced jalapeños, half the crumbled bacon, garlic powder, onion powder, smoked paprika, and black pepper. Mix until fully combined.
Shape the ball. Turn the mixture out onto a sheet of plastic wrap. Use the plastic wrap to help shape it into a round ball, pulling the wrap tight. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or up to 24 hours, until firm enough to hold its shape.
Coat the outside. In a shallow bowl, combine the remaining crumbled bacon, the remaining diced jalapeño, and the sliced green onions. Unwrap the chilled cheeseball and roll it in the coating mixture, pressing gently so the toppings adhere evenly on all sides.
Serve. Transfer the cheeseball to a serving board or plate. Let it sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before serving so it softens slightly for easy spreading. Surround with crackers, tortilla chips, or sliced bread.

Nutrition (per serving)

Bacon Jalapeño Popper Cheeseball — For the Nights When the Table Is the Whole Point