Baking Friends

This morning I made a batch of Lemon Pine Nut Biscotti … As I pulled out the little battered recipe book, I couldn’t help but think about my friend, Tony Day.  He gave me that biscotti recipe book years ago when I first moved to Rochester, and Lemon Pine Nut Biscotti was the first biscotti I ever tried to make.  It was a success, and over the years, biscotti became one of my favorite things to bake.

Tony died in the Fall of 2008, and I have missed him very much.  He was a wonderful person who had a way of making people feel successful. When I met him in 1996, he had retired from the Rochester Police Department.  In his retirement, he took on the job of looking after the neighborhood and everyone in it.   The neighborhood where I live was like his “Beat” and we all felt safe and cared for as he walked the street and talked with all of the neighbors.

I especially appreciate all the things he did to help me learn how to be a homeowner. He would often come to my house to help me because he enjoyed my creativity and wanted to help me realize my dreams of a beautiful home.  He seemed to intuitively know what I needed and helped me because he seemed to know that I would never ask anyone to help me.

He would do things like … bring me a better tool, give me unused building supplies he had in his stash or had scrounged up … or he would show me how to do something … like tiling, or changing a light fixture.   He would put me in touch with good repairmen and others who could help me get the work done if it was beyond his knowledge or expertise. 

So today, as I work in a new house, and I bake biscotti, I think of this wonderful man and how he touched and changed my life –and so many lives –in so many ways.  Thank you, Tony Day.  Thank you for helping me.  With every bite of my biscotti I thank you for showing me how to do things and for helping me succeed.  Most of all, thank you for being my friend.