peanut butter brownies

{We are off to Italy right now, but I wanted to leave at least something to be read while we’re away.  If you want to follow along on the trip, I’m trying my best to post on instagram when we have data/internet connections available.}

A couple of Fridays ago we had a group of people over to our house very briefly.  Gerrit’s big into homebrewing right now (I say that as if this is ever going to change, and I don’t see that happening…in fact I’m a little worried we’re going to end up owning a brewery one day), and some old friends/acquaintances of his have asked him to brew a recipe for them.  So they came over on Friday night before they went to dinner to try some of Gerrit’s beers and see his brewing set up.

It’s an odd thing to have people you don’t know at all come into your home and sit down and have beers and make conversation (especially for an introvert like me).  Really I want to think of myself as a gracious hostess, always happy to invite people it.  I want to think of myself as naturally hospitable and welcoming and never at all inconvenienced about having people over.  But the truth, it’s just not like that.  I’m perfectly happy to be polite and seem welcoming, but it’s also the truth that I really like having my own space most of the time.

But on Friday I tried to be gracious and welcome these people in and this is what I learned: we have an awful lot in common.  I sat with the girls in front of the television with the Braves game on mute and we chatted about moving and how hard it is to make life decisions and how hard it is to be in new places sometimes.  We talked about travel.  We talked about baseball.  And then someone noticed my Smitten Kitchen Cookbook on the coffee table and said “Oh I just love her site.”  And then we had that in common, too.  One girl had just made Deb’s homemade pop tarts.  Another raved about her apple cake.  (And I had just made her peanut butter brownies).

We go through life thinking we are so very different from the people around us.  We judge ourselves according to how others dress or the kinds of jobs other people have or kind of house they live in.  We make ourselves feel better or worse accordingly.  But we don’t need to spend our energy on finding our differences.  The truth is we have so much more in common than we think.  Like the love of a certain sport.  Or beer.  Or certain books.  Or cooking.

{Also related: this lovely post}

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