Tuesday, January 1, 2013.
Another Year, Another Party.
Two or three days ago, Mary Ann decreed we would have a New Year's Day party. Part of the motivation was to have my family over for the holidays. None of my relatives were here for Christmas, and only one on Thanksgiving. And there were friends we wanted to see, too.
Most of the calls to invitees happened yesterday. The party itself was thrown together with similar urgency. Scanning the guest list, Mary Ann was convinced that the affair would be a dud. We like all the people, but she thought the chemistry was wrong. And certain people deemed essential were otherwise engaged.
What would we cook? MA said she wanted it simple. I was to grill sliders, and that was about it. I gave myself a few other assignments. I still had bout a pint of oysters left over from Christmas, and thought it would be good to hand people a cup of oyster-artichoke soup when they arrived.
Yesterday at the store, I bought a half pork shoulder. This morning it was on the Big Green Egg early enough to spend seven hours out there in 250-degree heat, steam provided by my usual array of tuna fish cans over the spots on the grill where the hot air rose. This was the hit of the party, as I knew it would be when the meat began falling off the bone with the lightest pull of the tongs. Nice smoke ring in there, too, if I say so myself.
A friend of ours brought her boyfriend Jimmy. Jimmy--an Iranian who has lived in Denmark for a number of years--has been in the restaurant business for a long time. He insisted on helping me get the sliders grilled. We banged out about three dozen of the little hamburgers. Some people said they were too big, some said they were too small. They must have been perfect. I managed to grab the last one that came off the griddle.
The sun went down, but hardly anyone left. Four groups formed, and I opened five bottles of wine. The most convivial group was of the eight twenty-somethings, all but one of them cousins. The odd man out was Mary Ann's Boy, but the girl cousins were intrigued by him. He surely had to be pleased to have the attention of so many beautiful women his age. They played board games and cards until late in the evening.
This was a better party than Thanksgiving and Christmas put together. The food was incomparably simpler. I keep meeting up with the possibility that food isn't doing it for people the way it used to.
I cleaned up the kitchen. Happy New Year!
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