The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [72]
CHAPTER 8
Giving Thanks
COMMUNAL FEASTING WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY
Dining with one’s friends and beloved family is certainly one of life’s primal and most innocent delights, one that is both soul-satisfying and eternal.
-Julia Child, The Way to Cook
For me, summer officially begins when the first backyard barbecue is thrown. It’s the smell of charcoal and hamburger grease wafting down a residential block, mingling from various backyard grills. My first summer after beginning the blog, I took advantage of as many barbecue invitations as I could, held in friends’ yards or on rooftop patios. As a guest, all you had to do was bring your share of beer and a side dish perhaps, and sit back as a long evening unfolded under the starless sky, which popped with the occasional illegal firework on any given night.
Not eating out in New York feels like a more natural thing to do in summer. Ben and I would pack a picnic and ride our bikes to a nearby park for an afternoon. I lived a short walk from my local farmers’ market, and every Saturday when it was open, I would pick through the plentiful baskets, choosing what to make for the week’s feasts, amid the bustling crowd of neighbors doing just the same. I’d ride laps around Prospect Park on weekends and pass massive family barbecues taking place on the lawn one after another, catching waves of jerk seasoning and clouds of hibachi smoke from the track. Block parties serving full trays of barbecued chicken, mac and cheese, and collard greens would clog up an entire block, at least somewhere, on any weekend of the summer, it seemed. A handful of girlfriends and I planned an elaborate picnic at a waterfront park in Brooklyn, and convinced some local acoustic musician friends to entertain along the rocks, before a backdrop of the Manhattan skyline.
Then, almost as soon as I could get into the swing of things, summer faded into fall. My work schedule went back into full throttle, with no more half-day Fridays. It got cooler. My bike spent more and more days against the wall of my bedroom, unused. The fresh fruits and ripe Jersey tomatoes at the farmers’ markets dwindled. And then the forgotten hunger pangs for quick and convenient or long and languid restaurant meals came creeping back.
September marked the one-year anniversary of my blog and my not eating out. That summer, I had cooked up a storm. From picnic lunches to more elaborate projects, like a chilled watermelon soup served in a hollowed watermelon bowl I brought to one barbecue, I felt like there was no stopping my eating-in mission. I was only just getting warmed up, it seemed. So when I posted the twelfth “Reason for Not Eating Out” essay on my blog (each month, I wrote a post making one argument on the topic). I announced the one-year anniversary and the fact that I was going to push on with not eating out and blogging about it.
Ben seemed a little less jubilant about this decision than I was. He didn’t complain outwardly, but I could tell he was tiring of my nightly typing ritual and my insistence on bringing homemade food along with me whenever I was going to be out for a long period of time, instead of joining him for a bite at a restaurant. As a consequence, I craved occasions when I could be around like-minded cooking enthusiasts, and my friend Karol and I went to some of our first local amateur cook-offs that summer and fall.
Then came my favorite occasion to cook with others: If there was ever a time of the year when it was inappropriate to eat out, it was Thanksgiving.
My friend Matt decided he couldn’t wait to get into the spirit.
“A Fall Harvest Feast,” he wrote in an e-mail. The idea was, since so many of our friends left town for Thanksgiving, we would