My best friend Holly lives in Atlanta. We don’t see each other everyday, obvs, but between email, text, and phone calls, we are constantly in contact. The thing with not seeing each other in person is that the content of our conversations revolved around what’s going on with her, what’s going on with me, the occasional world event issue…but the distance factor means no shared experiences. So we decided to create one. It’s called “Our New Thing” because we can’t come up with anything else.

Every week, we alternate choosing a recipe and both make it. It doesn’t matter what night but we commit to cooking the recipe, sharing how it went, any pitfalls, pictures, skyping, whatever comes up. It achieves our goal of cooking more at home and doing something together.

Holly’s first pick was Smitten Kitchen’s French Onion Soup, chosen because she and her boyfriend recently had to-die-for French Onion Soup at a little bistro on their vacation to Paris. I volunteered to test a recipe for Shauna Niequist‘s new book “Bread and Wine” so Gaia cookies it was for week 2.

Holly made the soup first and cautioned me to not use glass bowls because boiling soup cracks glass bowls (and she has the 1st degree burns to prove it). I made the cookies first and called her, coincidentally on her way to the grocery, and told her to skip the dates…they’re expensive and weren’t 100% necessary (although get excited for this recipe to be in Shauna’s book- these cookies are incredible!). It’s kind of cool, really- our new thing is really just a big friendship analogy. You try things out, share the experience with a friend and hope they benefit from your navigating it first. Or if they don’t, you’ll at least have matching 1st degree burns.

Moral of the story: there are always ways to bridge the miles between friends, homemade French onion soup is so worth the time and real butter in cookies simply cannot be debated- it’s just better delicious.

(Top photo via)