California meat girlfriend visits the prairie

Tonight on the remote prairie of North Dakota we had a supper guest. Supper is dinner to those of you who don’t live in the upper Midwest. She traveled from California. She blogs about meat from her family owned business where she works 6 days a week, Chico Locker and Sausage. It’s Jenny Dewey. I know her from social media. I consider her a friend. But in all the previous time in my career I have spent in California, I had never met her in person until tonight.

Before driving to the Capitol city of North Dakota where I had business meetings to tend to today in my office, I had two beef roasts in the slow cooker this morning by 6AM. I called my mom to tell her how nervous I was. I had a meat expert in Jenny coming to supper. I couldn’t afford to screw this up as I didn’t have a back up plan and wanted a solid family meal to serve our guests and family. I throw meals together almost daily but a little pressure had me doubting myself.

I had 5.5 lbs. of beef roast. I added curry powder, garlic, red wine, salt and pepper, a dash of liquid smoke, turned it on low and it cooked for 11 hours before I turned it to the “warm” setting.

Miss Jenny smiled throughout the meal and evening. I think I passed her meat test. Roast was my easy schedule option. Grilling steaks would have been my favorite, preferred meat selection for my meat expert from California guest. But thankfully Miss Jenny is easy to please.

Part (actually all) of Jenny’s smile has nothing to do with roast or garlic mashed potatoes, or chopped salad or green beans or mango and blackberry fruit salad. I even had California red wine for Jenny to feel at home. But it was not the food and drink that has Jenny beaming. Instead, Jenny has met a man I also met via social media. He’s a farmer just 25 miles down the road from us. There are only about three of us in our entire county on Twitter I think. Mark is one. Mark aka Sunflowerfarmer farms and works as an agronomist locally. Short story? Jenny and Mark connected on Twitter late last year and the rest is history. It’s a modern day romance. When online connections create offline relationships I am thrilled…and personally thankful for the true friendships I have come to know from this experience.

Social media is fun. It’s interactive. It engages. It connects. It empowers. But taking online relationships offline to sit around a supper table for face to face conversation is needed for a greater connection. Mark and Jenny came to visit and we had great conversation and laughs. Almost like we were tweeting…only it was in real life on the North Dakota prairie.

 After supper we visited in the living room. Miss A got out baby pictures to show off to our guests.

Miss E made “projects”. (And yes our girls are dressed like it is summer in March on the prairie. Because, it is. Record high temperatures. We might be wearing swimsuits in 80F this weekend.) Maybe our heat wave is from a little California sunshine that Miss Jenny brought to the prairie?

Mark, Jenny, (me) and Nathan

Sunshine or not, a visit from a social media turned real life friend to our home was a delight tonight.

Have you taken online relationships offline and met face to face with friends?

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