Love that lasts: Quickie greens and beans recipe

I’ve decided to go back and try and patch things up with my longtime greens and beans recipe. We’ve been with each other for years, and definitely had our ups and downs, including the unfortunate “crock-pot” phase of the relationship that required a decent amount of therapy to get over. But, in the end, we always seem to come back to each other, even after my most recent transgression in which I ran off with a recipe I met in a bar.

In my teens, I thought of relationships as black and white. You loved, or you didn’t. You were kind, or you were a jerk. Someone was the one, or they weren’t. Now in my late 30s, things seem far murkier. I’ve lost people for seemingly small upsets and forgiven and been forgiven for unthinkable acts of betrayal. I’ve been nice and jerk, loved and raged. I’m not sure what it is that makes a relationship -- with a recipe or a person -- endure while others wilt or fade away.

If I were to venture a guess, I would say lasting relationships have to, at the essence, nurture your body and soul, and, at the same time, be forgiving of wild deviations and massive screw-ups. There have to be moments when you can close your eyes, breathe it in and think I wouldn’t be any other place right now. And there has to be enough space and flexibility to grow weary, drift and then come back and discover new things.

Or maybe the key to a long-lasting relationship is much simpler: the quickie.

In my early 20s, I worked as secretary in New York City. There was a guy in the office who often arrived from his long commute grumpy and full of complaints. He would snark about his noisy kids, or his wife who, I gathered from his remarks, had gained a few pounds since they married. (Not that this guy was going to try out for the remake of Conan the Barbarian anytime soon, but hey.) After a few months of this, I – in my child-of-divorce approach to the world -- was waiting for the big explosion.

I figured one day he would walk in and announce that he’d left his wife and moved to the city, perhaps in an apartment above a strip club or something.

So one morning the guy walks in with a big smile on his face and says to me and the other three secretaries in the room, You know, a wife is like a wallet. (And this, my friends, is why I wanted to work in the big city.)

You can go out and get a shiny new one made of expensive leather, he said, but you put it in you back pocket and sit down and it is all stiff and uncomfortable.

But an old wallet is different, he continued. We had all stopped drinking our coffee at this point. He was leaning back in his chair, his arms expansive.

An old wallet may be worn and cracked, but it fits. You put it in your pocket and sit down and it curves right you. It is comfortable. He held his hand up in a soft cup. There’s no better feeling in the world, he said. It just fits.

We stared at him dumbfounded, caught somewhere between the metaphor and trying not to picture the shape of his backside.

Perhaps it is best that the ties that bind remain a mystery.

Here’s the recipe for “quickie” greens and beans. Simple, uncomplicated but ohhhh, soooo good.