Your post reminds me of one of the loveliest meals I’ve ever had.
Many years ago, I made the friendship of a lady originally from Germany, who had spent time in a concentration camp during the war because she had been using her papers to help Jews escape the Nazis - she was part of a Quaker group that was involved in this enterprise, and she finally got caught.
(She used to joke that she was ‘allergic’ to barbed wire; and told stories about how the neighbors, during the time when she was ‘active’ in this endeavor, must have thought she was a prostitute, with all of these men sneaking to her door in the dark of night.)
After the war and her release, she emigrated to the US, where she spent many happy years as one of the first female professionals in her field, and married to a lovely American man. By the time I met her, she was widowed, and had a tiny but elegantly and perfectly appointed apartment near Dupont Circle in DC.
One day she made a meal for me entirely from scratch: Oxtail Soup, and a flat little fruit tart with a wonderful flaky crust. But the company and stories are what made it a memory of a lifetime for me.
Great meals are always much more than the food.
-JT
She sounds like an amazing woman - the furniture store in my home town was owned by a survivor of the concentration camps, not sure which one (didn’t ask) but he had the numbers tattooed on his arm. He had three sons and when each of them graduated college he set them up with stores of their own. His name was Jack and he remembered every customer, great guy who had truly been through hell.
Excellent !