One of the things about living in NYC that I’ve found hardest to adjust to is not hanging out at people’s apartments. We all either live in places too small to hold more than two people at a time or places too out of the way for anyone to want to travel to. If it’s not one, it’s the other.
But this year, my friend Ash was determined to have a practice Thanksgiving at her apartment and went all-out with impressive invitations, a massive menu, and promises that she would hunt us down and stuff us if we didn’t make it worth her while to take up her entire refrigerator with a brining turkey for two days. So we took cabs or spent three hours navigating weekend subway construction to make it to her and her husband, Michael’s, Queens apartment last Saturday night for a pre-Thanksgiving feast our families will have a hard time topping tomorrow.
Michael and Ash got rid of about half of the furniture in their place to make room for this new dining table they bought especially for the occasion. Well worth it, I say.
Ash carved a turkey for the first time and looked smokin’ doing it.
The turkey was about the moistest meat I’ve ever had in my life. The stuffing was fruity, the sweet potatoes spicy, the twice-baked potatoes bacony, the cauliflower casserole creamy, the green beans smoky, the apple pie belly-warming, the lemon cheesecake rich.
There was gravy, too, but I never eat gravy. Am I the only one who thinks it’s tooooooootally weird stuff?
Michael was in high spirits,
Ash was being Betty Sue Homemaker,
Jack was his usual pleasant self,
Jeff was complaining that the ice cream was regular vanilla and not vanilla bean,
Gizmo was pretending to innocently play with a ball under the table while secretly waiting for dropped turkey,
and Penny, the cat we found in the Hamptons, was acting like all of us would be about two minutes after dinner:
Success!
