Over the past week and change, I’ve had two dinners with friends. They’ve been quite a salve during a time when I’ve needed it. The meals themselves were very different. One was at my apartment. I cooked venison, roasted cauliflower, and used my fancy new rice cooker. Since I added sour cherries to the rice, that was the hit of the evening. It was a calm meal with relaxed conversation. The other was at a new small plates restaurant aiming for a Miami feel—art deco décor, Latin food, and tropical plants. Everything was close but not quite there. They have, however, definitely nailed the way-too-loud music element that is quintessential Miami.

This morning, too, I had breakfast at Chick-fil-A with most of the group from my men’s bible study where I had a regular chicken biscuit. Even though the sessions have concluded for the spring semester, it was nice to get together with those guys as that has been one of the few consistent places where I’ve been around men who are further along the journey of life than I am. Since I own my own business and we work from our apartments, I don’t get that from work as might have happened in an alternate universe.

None of these three meals was really about the food. They were about the conversation, the jokes, and the what-did-you-just-say moments. These are the sorts of things I haven’t done enough, the sort of things I’ll need to do even more as spring turns to summer and I have more free evenings. One of the reasons I chose Durham when I came back to the Triangle was because it has better and more varied restaurants than Raleigh. I even have a spreadsheet of places that I update occasionally and share with people who want local inspiration. Maybe I’ll finally start filling in more of the rows in the notes column of that spreadsheet.