By Libbie Summers
Photography by Chia Chong

My dearest friend, Brenda, is a great cook. She’s also a lover of all things pink (from popsicles to pop stars), Richard Nixon biographies (I’m still trying to figure that one out) and karaoke bars. Brenda always keeps me laughing and on my toes. The day she opened a door in her home and showed me her immense and costly fabric collection I came close to dying from laughter. You see, my friend Brenda doesn’t sew.

Brenda and I do a food podcast together and have worked on the culinary production of some food television shows we’d probably both prefer to forget. We’ve had the pleasure of cooking together in back alleys, corn fields, roof tops and pastured pig farms. We’ve even driven a sketchy trailer across a peanut state to cook a private dinner for the 39^th United States President and his wife (they both asked for seconds).

Sure, Brenda and I have a lot of fun cooking together, but it’s the quiet time when we can lounge on a dock and eat a pile of hot onion rings (Brenda makes The World’s Best) or sit at a farm table and devour a just baked apple pie that are truly special to me. In those moments, we are two school girls again. We let down the guards we keep up for others and relax into our friendship. The food we share always binding us together and always helping feed new memories.