The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [127]
“Psshhh.” I’d shrugged him off. “Of course I’ll be fine.”
I was completely fine, as it turned out. Dan and Jordan, however, were not. They’d gone to another bar in the area a little while after I left and were hit by a car when crossing the street on their way home. According to witnesses they were both tossed from the impact almost halfway down the block.
Jordan broke her pelvis in three places and spent the next month recovering at her parents’ home outside Philadelphia. Dan fared slightly better, with a leg injury and lots of bumps and bruises. My first reaction to the news, after talking to Jordan on the phone, was to bake something tasty and send it to her. Fresh blueberries were in season, so with a little improvisation, I managed to mold pastry into four heart-shaped tarts and filled the centers with blueberries. When they were baked and ready to eat, I packaged up the tarts in a box and shipped them out to her parents’ house the same day.
The rest of my friends were naturally just as shocked as I was by the accident. We decided to do something more for Jordan. Her hip and the bruises across her entire body were slowly healing, according to her doctors. She was expected to make a full recovery, but it would be several weeks, maybe even months, before she could walk again. In the meantime, despite the everyday obstacles of using a wheelchair and coping with the pain, Jordan was extremely bored. What’s more, while she was in the emergency room in Brooklyn, her wallet, cell phone, and iPod had all been stolen.
Karol suggested we all go in on a new iPod for Jordan. Over e-mail the first week of the accident, we rounded up a number of Jordan’s friends who were happy to pitch in for the cause. We decided to get the iPod engraved, and deliberated over just the right message to put on the back of the device. It should be something lighthearted but sincere. Miraculously, Jordan was keeping her chin up and was dying to get better fast so she come could back to New York and continue her life as soon as possible. DJ finally nailed the inscription: “Takes a lickin‘, but keeps on tickin’.” The newly engraved iPod was in Jordan’s hands in a few days.
These things were all we could do to feel a little bit better about the situation, shower our friend with gifts. But the accident disconcerted me more, long afterward. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I had been with Jordan and Dan shortly before it happened—it could just as easily have been me, riding my bike through the busy streets of Williamsburg, getting pummeled by a car. I thought about all the things I’d focused my summer on, the food events, cook offs, and cooking in general that I’d been obsessing over. It all seemed a little bit silly, suddenly, and indulgent.
But there were still commitments to honor and meals to make. No sooner had the hot dog cook-off ended than I found myself in the midst of preparations for Studio BBQ. Michael, Mark, and I debated the menu, and how many dishes to serve. We decided on three barbecued main-course options: brisket, pulled pork, and braised duck. For sides, we would serve everyone two of the following four options: black-eyed pea succotash, coleslaw, braised collard greens, and a cold sesame noodle salad. Finally, everyone would get the same dessert, a slice of coconut banana cornbread with peach compote. We didn’t want to serve anything that had to be cooked on location, like the hamburgers at the last Studio BBQ, which created waits and long lines. Plus, Mark and Michael didn’t want grilling to be confused with barbecue. In the traditional sense of the word, barbecue was slow-cooked meat, like beef brisket or pulled pork butt. So all of our courses would be premade and scooped out of chafing dishes