By I turned thirty-five on Wednesday. Lourdes had me over for dinner Saturday. Angela came with James and Mia. Mia is two and a half and ate frosting with her hands and called me "Tita Grace" for the first time. The naming was the gift.
I found Lourdes's list on the kitchen counter when I went to refill my water. An actual list. Names, occupations, parishes, a notation in her handwriting that said "very nice" next to two of them and "too short for Grace" next to one. I took a picture of it with my phone before I put it back. I sent it to Angela. Angela wrote back: "She has been at this for twenty years. The list is a lifework." I laughed. I laughed for an hour.
Lourdes pretended not to know I had seen it. We ate lechon kawali. The pork was crisp. The pork was perfect. The pork was, as always, Lourdes's apology and her instruction at once. I am thirty-five. I am healthy. I am alone. The aloneness has become a known shape. The known shape is workable.
Green-up barely starting. The first dandelions in the lawn.
I read for an hour Sunday night. The reading was the small surrender. The surrender was the rest.
A reader from Honolulu wrote me a long email about the post. The email was beautiful. I wrote her back.
I made a list Sunday morning of the small things I needed to do this week. The list was twenty-three items. I crossed off twelve by Wednesday. I crossed off four more by Friday. The remaining seven moved to next week's list. The moving is the practice.
Pete texted me Saturday. We talked on the phone for twenty minutes. He listened. I talked. He laughed at the right places. He asked the right questions.
Lourdes called Tuesday. She was upset about something at the church. I listened. I made the right sounds at the right intervals. I did not try to fix it. The not-fixing was the love.
I called Angela on Saturday. We talked about the week. We laughed at the things we always laugh at. We did not say what was actually weighing — both of us were carrying things and both of us were saving them for in-person. The phone is good for the surface. The kitchen is for the depth.
The blog post for the week was a short reflection on the recipe of choice. Six hundred words. I drafted Tuesday. I revised Thursday. I posted Friday morning. The cadence has been the cadence for two decades. The cadence is the discipline. The discipline is the reason the work survives the years.
The grocery store had calamansi this week. I bought four pounds. I made calamansi vinaigrette and froze it in cubes. The cubes will get me through the next three months. The freezing is the small inheritance from Lourdes — every Filipina mother freezes things in cubes.
I sat at the kitchen window for a long time after dinner. The inlet was silver. The light was already gone. The kitchen was warm. The body was holding.
Pete and I had coffee Friday at the same Kaladi we have been going to for fifteen years. He still drinks it black. I have switched to oat milk in the last few years and he gives me grief about it every single time. The grief is the friendship.
The week ended quietly. The body did its slow work of integration. The integration is the only work that matters in weeks like this.
The book I am reading this month is a memoir by a Vietnamese-American chef. The book is good. The book is also, in some ways, my own life adjacent. The adjacent is the thing that keeps me reading.
Lourdes’s lechon kawali has always been her way of saying the things she can’t quite get out in words — the worry, the love, the twenty-year project of wanting me to be not-alone. I can’t replicate her recipe here (some things belong to the kitchen they came from), but this bacon-wrapped stuffed beer bratwurst carries the same spirit: it is pork that does not apologize for itself, layered and loud and somehow both festive and deeply grounding. Make it for people you’d let see your kitchen counter. Make it for the people who laugh at the right places.
Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Beer Bratwurst
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 6 bratwurst sausages
- 12 strips thin-cut bacon
- 1 bottle (12 oz) lager or pale ale beer
- 1 cup shredded pepper jack cheese
- 1/4 cup pickled jalapeño slices, roughly chopped
- 1 medium yellow onion, sliced
- 2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
- Toothpicks or kitchen twine, for securing
Instructions
- Simmer the bratwurst. In a medium saucepan, combine sliced onion, beer, and 1/2 cup water over medium heat. Add bratwursts and simmer (do not boil) for 12–15 minutes until cooked through. Remove bratwursts and pat dry; discard liquid or reserve for serving onions.
- Butterfly and stuff. Using a sharp knife, cut a lengthwise slit down the center of each bratwurst, cutting about 3/4 of the way through — do not cut all the way. Gently open each one and fill with a heaping tablespoon of shredded pepper jack cheese and a pinch of chopped jalapeños. Press closed.
- Season and wrap. In a small bowl, combine garlic powder and smoked paprika. Dust the outside of each stuffed bratwurst lightly with the spice mixture. Wrap 2 strips of bacon tightly around each bratwurst in a spiral, overlapping slightly to keep the stuffing in. Secure ends with toothpicks.
- Sear or grill. Heat olive oil in a cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat (or preheat grill to medium-high). Cook bacon-wrapped bratwursts for 8–10 minutes, turning every 2 minutes, until bacon is fully crisped and caramelized on all sides.
- Rest and serve. Remove toothpicks. Let rest 3 minutes before serving. Serve with whole-grain mustard and, if reserved, the beer-braised onions spooned over the top.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 520 | Protein: 27g | Fat: 41g | Carbs: 6g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 1040mg