Dear Counselor
This is the inaugural advice column, which will run every two weeks, or otherwise at my whim.
Dear Counselor Chomp,
I’m thinking of hosting a dinner party, and I never have before. Actually, I don’t even think I’ve been to more than one official dinner party, and it was awkward and no fun. (Someone once told me that dinner parties aren’t as big in Austin as elsewhere for some reason.)
I remember reading that you like them. Do you have any words of advice on the number of guests? The ideal mix? Whether it should be formal or informal? How about for food genre?
Hungry and Hopeful
Dear Hungry and Hopeful,
Austin is the perfect place to have a dinner party, because it’s casual and warm. And casual and warm are the two best qualities anyone can hope for in a dinner party, at least if they are throwing it themselves. (If you’re an invitee, you can be hoping for great food, or a great networking opportunity, or a key party. But you are not a guest, you are the host: you should aim for casual and warm.)
I once had the pleasure of interviewing Chuck Williams, who is the Williams behind Williams Sonoma. I was doing a magazine piece on the best entertaining tip just in case people drop by, and my talk with him gave me an excellent perspective on entertaining for the rest of my life, because the thrust of his answer was, “Liquor. Liquor and a bowl of peanuts. Always keep those on hand, and you’ll be fine.” He was eloquent and thoughtful, but he explained that honeydew and marscapone and a fresh souffle are nice, but that what people really want is a cocktail or a glass or wine or some seltzer and a tiny snack, and that that and a smile will get you a long way in terms of making guests feel comfortable, happy, and welcome. Prosecco works well, because the bubbles pierce your blood with alcohol immediately, and everyone will be quickly imbued with a feeling of pleased well-being and should they need it, forgiveness.
That said, if it’s a dinner party, and you have invited people for dinner, they will expect dinner. That’s not a problem if you’ve planned it out.
Guests: Who is the party for? Start small. Invite four people you like. Invite four people you aren’t obsessed with impressing. Invite four people who like to drink, and who aren’t vegetarians.
If it’s a couples thing, invite one couple who you know well. They are your support team, and you can call on them for help if necessary. And then, invite another couple you like but whom you’d like to get to know better, and who you think would jive well with the first couple. Those people provide the color and interest.
Menu: Here’s my main piece of advice: visualize how the evening will play out. Will your brow be dripping into the lentil soup when your guests arrive? Will you swear at them for ever having been born? Or will you have on fresh clothes and a smile and join your guests in an icy and fragrant gin cocktail when they arrive?
I’ve tried both approaches, and I urge you to stride as quickly as possible in the direction of the latter scenario.
That means managing your expectations about what you will serve. It means allotting time for planning, and cooking ahead. But food that has been prepped in advance is no less delicious than food that you are cursing over. Even if you didn’t live in Texas, I’d advise you to cook something that can be served buffet-style and at room temperature. I’m serious. Maybe have hot bread, or one hot thing. But start simple and see how it goes from there and let your confidence build. A few things that are great at room temperature: broiled asparagus spears, roasted meats, roasted vegetables, grain salads.
Another tip: Fat people are supposed to wear one piece of chunky, stunning jewelry. I am not calling you fat.
However, let’s apply that concept to your party. Think of like, the most delicious thing you can think of that you can serve. Is it doable for a party? Can you make it in bulk, or can you make it beforehand? Is it going to take a lot of complex execution at the last minute? If you think it would work, make it the focus, and then think of what might complement that. You only need to fret over the one piece of fat jewelry, which is one really special thing, and let the rest of the things play complementary or supporting roles.
Do make sure to have balance. Aside from having enough of a main dish, you’ll want a starch and plenty of vegetables.
Always serve salad. It’s civilized, the acidity of dressing is a great foil for other tastes, and it’s good for you. Our go-to salad comes from a box, has olive oil, a little kosher salt, lemon and rice wine vinegar, and black pepper. It’s very easy but very good. And while I hate to burden you with this information just before your party, salad does not count as the vegetable.
Planning the details:
Try to picture the evening, and ask yourself key questions, including but not limited to:
What will happen when guests arrive?
Do you have enough spots for people to sit?
Will the kids be awake? If so, at what point will they go to bed? Will that interrupt the evening? Just plan for it.
Is there good lighting? If you don’t want candles but you don’t want the overhead light, put some Christmas lights into a bowl. Or perhaps you live in a place where the electricity is sound enough that you have a dimmer. If so, can I come to the party? I love dimmers and never seem to live in that sort of place.
Is there enough silverware, glasses, etc.?
Again: casual is fine. If your party is supposed to be one with starched napkins, ie, if you aim high, you might disappoint. Try some great paper napkins from Ikea or use a pile of colorful floppy cloth ones. If you want to serve wine and don’t have enough wine glasses, little juice glasses work well. Anyone who expects you to have a really formal or fancy dinner party isn’t worth impressing. People just like to come over.
Picture the moment of serving the food. Will you be plating it yourself? Or bringing bowls to the table? Or doing an assembly line where people bring their plates up?
Don’t forget to consider dessert, coffee, and what you’ll have on offer to drink after dinner.
I hope this helps. Certain things need to be done several times before you are comfortable with them. And I’ll bet that Martha Stewart still gets nervous before people come over. Just have fun with it, and your guests will, too.
To get your question answered by Counselor Chomp, email it to churchchomp at gmail dot com.
I often ask my friend Manuel what to make for dinner. We’ll be on the phone talking about work projects or talking about nothing, and I’ll ask what they’re having, or if he’s tried anything good recently.
Recently he told me that he’d been “stewing down squash with corn and zucchini.” He was going to add some salsa and some sour cream and make tacos or quesadillas with cheddar.
A few days later I was shopping with little inspiration and decided I’d try the stewed veggie taco thing myself. I snagged some corn. Then I looked around and remembered that “squash” is like “snow” for Eskimos, except the opposite: we call everything squash: summer, butternut acorn, spaghetti. Summer and winter squashes seem to have more differences than similarities.
I grabbed my phone out of my pocket to call Manuel but it died before I could dial.
Summer squash seemed like it could be watery, but he did say stewed. Hmm. I grabbed a butternut, since it’s winter.
My trick for approaching winter squashes is to cook them on 350 for about 20 minutes, and then chop them in half, and then peel them with a Y-shaped peeler.
I then chop the denuded squash the rest of the way.
For this recipe, which was nothing more than a loose concept, I cooked half of the chunks in canola oil with some ginger and when it was slightly caramelized on certain edges and getting soft all over, I added some corn and some sliched zucchini. After those were “stewing down,” I added a little sour cream, salt, and salsa at the end. We had crunchy greasy salt corn tortilla quesadillas with cheddar, and the squash filling. I served it with avocado and cilantro and salad and beans and some delicious Mexican rice, which is also Manuel’s recipe. Wow, were they popular. Hearty and tasty and filling and wintry and great. They were pretty much the perfect Sunday night meal.
Maybe a week later, on the phone again with Manuel, I mentioned that I’d tried the squash taco filling to make quesadillas, and that these quesadillas were a big hit. I told him I wasn’t sure which sort of squash to use and had chosen a butternut.
“Oh,” he said. “No. It’s summer squash.”
No matter, we’ve now invented an excellent thing to eat in our house. It’s now our most favorite kind of filling for quesadillas. Usually I use a box of frozen spinach instead of zucchini: I’ve abandoned the summer squash-type-of-thing concept altogether. It being Sunday night, and us having vegetarians for houseguests, we’ll likely try them again tonight.
Birthday Cards from Beyond
I’ve written a bit about the recent cake exploits in relation to my swirl of possibly sugar-fueled depression.
You never really need a reason for cake but we’ve had quite a few, and this is a story about one of the reasons, though it does not star cake.
A few weeks ago was my mom’s birthday. My sister was the GRAND POOBAH of birthdays and holidays. We’d held the last zillion holiday and birthday celebrations over at her house, because not including her in something so extremely important as a birthday was unthinkable. Of course, she was never as included as she wanted to be no matter where we had it: she couldn’t leave her room, and we couldn’t all spend the entire celebration in her bedroom, darkened to make her eyes feel better. Not to mention that she couldn’t eat cake or lasagna. Like me, and the rest of the humans, some of the main things my sister wanted were to eat delicious food and to be included in everything all of the time. And she wanted to celebrate. More than being celebrated herself, she wanted to celebrate you. Hard. So we tried to make her happy regarding birthdays, but we were still disappointing.
In this new era, which should be easily indicated by some letters — AD? I think that’s taken. PB? We will never be post Beth — you will see what I mean. In this new era, we did not have my mom’s birthday over at Beth’s: we had it at my mom and dad’s house. The “first” of everything after someone dies is supposed to be rough. My birthday was two weeks after my sister died, and I was somewhat insane, and I don’t even know if it counted. I really wanted to celebrate, because I realized that the other option, the one with me sobbing on my bed about being 39 and the passage of time and loss and mortality, was not pretty. Christmas was also not pleasant, though it has not been pleasant for a number of years. It seemed like this birthday, three months later, this could potentially be pretty unpleasant for my mom. I felt compelled to make sure that my mom would have the sort of birthday that a person would want, but also one that my sister would have envisioned, with cake, flowers, balloons, chocolates, and gifts.
I also tried to get a good card for my mom.
Cards can be tough, because you are subscribing to someone else’s sentiment, and it’s generally too vague or too specific or too sappy: it’s too someone else. Finally I found one that I thought would be great from me, but I was still browsing around. Then I found another one I liked — and realized that it would be the perfect card from my sister to our mom. Talk about someone else’s sentiment.
I have been buying cards from my sister for a long time, as well as signing them for her. Uh, just because my sister had ALS and was bedridden, that did not mean you were not getting a freaking birthday card from her! So when I saw a good one from her, I thought, wait. Should I buy this card to be from my sister?
To buy it seemed like a natural extension of acting on the sentiment I know was hers, and it was something I was accustomed to doing. Beth can’t do this thing, but it’s important to her, so I will do it for her. That’s the way we’d been operating. Except, which is weirder: not doing what you normally do, or buying and signing a card from a person who has actually died? I wrestled around with it, and decided that the second was the weirder of the two choices. Also, there would be the issue of my mother opening a card from someone no longer with us. Way to put someone in the spotlight on the spot!
So, I bought a “to mom on her birthday” card from me. And I arranged to give it to my mom just from me — my husband and son would have another card to give.
I had my card. The birthday was still a few days out.
On one of the nights of those days, I had a dream.
When Beth was sick, I’d dream about her all the time, but I would dream that she was healthy. We’d be about to go swimming, or to a restaurant, and I’d be expecting her to have a hard time walking or talking, but then she’d show up and be fine. In my sleep I realized that we were all making really heavy weather about the disease: she was really pretty much fine.
But after a while, I did start dreaming that she would die. It was sad. I was growing to accept things.
Since her death, in the PB or the AD or whatever, nothing. I’d had no dreams about her.
Until:
Very soon after I chose not to buy the card, I dreamt that I was visiting Beth. She wasn’t at home, and she wasn’t in the hospital. I’m not sure where she was. She was still alive but very much in the throes of ALS. She couldn’t move or speak. She was in the middle of a huge bed, the size of many rooms put together. In the dream, her arms were actually in a sort of crossed mummy position. I went to visit and started crawling across the huge bed on my hands and knees to give her a hug and kiss and to be close to her so I could talk to her. And she . . . she . . . she started rolling towards me. Fast! This rolling thing — this was not a power she had in life, after she’d lost her other powers. But in my dream, she was a fast-rolling, alive, wrapped-up mummy sister. And man, was she mad at me. Mad like a snake.
I woke up confused and disconcerted, obviously. I’ve been waiting to have a dream about Beth. One where she comes to me happy, in a bloom of soft light, and says something to the tune of, “I’m ok now! It’s good out / up / in here! I miss you but I’m not suffering! And I’ll see you later!” In the anticipated dream, everything is floaty. No one is mad at me. I had a dream like that about my great uncle after he died. It was excellent.
This was not peaceful. I was sure that she was mad at me for not buying a card for our mom from her. Frankly, it seemed totally in character.
A few days later, it was the tail end of the birthday dinner for my mom. We’d had cake and wine and balloons and our fabulous family chicken casserole. The kids ate pizza. It was time for cards and gifts. I’d gotten everything done but hadn’t yet signed the card for my mom.
I signed it “Love, Mere” like I am supposed to, and then something came over me, and it may have been emotion, and it may have been sparkling Chardonnay, and it may have been fear of bad dreams, but at the last moment I was moved to put in parentheses, “(and in spirit, Beth)”.
I licked it and sealed it and handed it over.
When she opened the card, my mom—our mom—teared up. I mean come on, who wouldn’t?
She kept on with the cards and gifts and overall the evening was considered a success, I think. She had her husband there, and grandkids yelling around eating pizza and her sons-in-law and daughter and sister and brother-in-law and dog all celebrating her birth and her life. I made a huge cupcake with marshmallow filling. It was a fake Hostess one. It was a good birthday, I think.
The next day, my mom and I went shopping. Driving around, we talked through some of the events of the previous evening. I mentioned the card and she said it was a surprise, opening a card from both of us. I explained my conundrum in the store and the subsequent scary dream. My mom, who’d been bossed by Beth about getting the right cards and gifts far more than I had ever been, laughed and laughed.
I said something to the effect that Beth had gotten to me.
Mom pointed out that really what had happened is that I had gotten to myself.
Sigh.
I have no idea what happens after death. I am not certain in my beliefs. I don’t actually even have any to be certain about, though it’s not from lack of thinking about it. It’s like faith. The word “faith” doesn’t mean that you know something is true, it means that you’ve decided that you can’t know or don’t know and will make decisions based on not knowing. You don’t take a “leap of faith” because something is a sure thing. You do it because you’ve decided that acting one way is worth it, for whatever reason, and you have enough evidence, or enough insouciance, or enough forward motion from your culture or community to leave rationality behind. I don’t have the ability to make that decision, though, or perhaps the desire. The idea of God and afterlife seem both metaphorical and soupy to me, and neither of those is a slam. But if you boil it down time and again, it just ends up concentrated as the idea of “Do unto others” or “don’t be a big jerk” or “you are accountable for your actions, you know, so try to have good actions.” Those are great ideas. I try hard to stand by them, but I can’t do a lot more than that. I can’t believe more than I believe. And I never know what to believe.
Because of the dream I had about my great uncle, I’ve always had a rather hopeful notion of still being able to communicate with a person who has died, or at least receive a one-way communication. You know, a telegram. I have a vague sense that people who have died aren’t completely and totally done, but that doesn’t mean I think that they are in heaven. It might mean that they are going to come back in another way and keep trying for greater enlightenment.
But it’s amazing how we internalize people while they are here with us, isn’t it. I spent so much energy trying to convince my sister that she would always be with me, but for her sake, so she wouldn’t feel bad. Now that she’s gone, I think a lot more about the effect that this has on me. But she’s with me, all right.
Rocky Climb
If you are a regular reader, you know that I lost my sister to ALS on November 5th, a little less than four months ago.
People ask me how my sister’s kids are doing. How her husband is doing. How my parents are doing, and how I am doing. I appreciate this more than I can express, but I realize that it’s almost like I can’t climb down into how I feel without some sort of engraved invitation. It’s not that I don’t want to. I do want to. But I can’t, or at the very least, there is a delayed reaction. And so I usually think that I am ok, really, that things are good.
The truth is that so many things were so bad for so long that yes, things are better and we are not worrying about the stupid day to day ALS crap like, does she still have enough mouth control to eat, what if she chokes, what effect is this having on her kids. So yes, things are good in a certain way.
And then suddenly I’ll stop for a coffee while grocery shopping and I’ll be putting half and half in my coffee, and think about how much I love half and half and how cozy it is to get a coffee while out, and then I think, “Sure, I love half and half and coffee, but Beth really loved half and half and the coziness of getting a coffee while out,” and then like a flash I am up against the completely normal fact that I had a sister, and quickly followed by the need to re-digest the forced fact that my sister died, that she basically just died, and what the hell am I doing having coffee at Fairway when she is dead, and then this progression of thought is quickly followed up by oh, crap, where is Henry. Only about a second has passed, and he’s looking at the cow on the milk dispenser. Moo.
Friday, which is what I just described, is sort of a normal day. But then on days like today, I realize that I just don’t even know how I am.
For the last month I’ve done little other than make and eat cake for various events. I am drawn to cake like a moth to a flame, and that may be why my wings are melting.
I haven’t been writing, or doing yoga, or driving in the car and listening to music that sparks me to emotion, or laughing with friends, or doing any of the things that clean me out and let me emote or keep me centered. Another big mistake, I see today, when I woke up splattered with doubt and negativity and uncontrollable emotion.
I spent some time yesterday with the wife of one of my husband’s great life friends. I like this wife very much. She is a bit older than I am, and she has three children, and lots of great advice. She’s confident, self-deprecating, an MD, a Catholic, and hilarious. They live out of town but one time we went there for dinner, and she made us really good steaks. She’s also quite compassionate, though I don’t know her terribly well. My impression is that she is careful about what is important.
This wife lost her dad when she was young, and has spoken to me a few times about Beth, who she met at our wedding. That night, we all sat at the head table together. Beth had been diagnosed less than 3 months before, but her speech was awful, and she’d broken her leg really badly. If you didn’t know Beth before the wedding and you met her there, you might not understand that she was a normal person to whom a bad series of things were happening. Because you might not want to think that you were also a person to whom a series of seriously bad things could happen, you might be inclined to disassociate with her. I think that a lot of people don’t understand, when confronted with a health problem, that there aren’t sick people and healthy people, but rather just a pile of people, and let’s just hope you continue to have good days.
But I do think that the wife understood that. And yesterday, she asked me if I knew what grief would look like if you drew it. She explained that if grief looks like waves, and that at first the amplitude is large, and the periodicity is frequent. And that then the periodicity is less frequent, and but the amplitude of the waves that do appear is still large. And that finally, the amplitude shrinks.
As I walk through these winter days sisterless, I realize again and again that loss is a rocky climb up and down these damn amplitudic waves, with the bobbing and floating and dragging. But the worst is not even doing the grieving, and I feel like I’ve been irritable and anxious and overwhelmed, but that I haven’t managed to do the things that help with the grieving. I have felt more than once that spending time with someone compassionate who isn’t part of my every day is actually just the engraved invitation I need to climb down into how I feel. It happens when people ask, even if it doesn’t happen in that exact moment.
I’ve been doing TV and cake and dirty snow and the elliptical and wine in a box. Sugar, booze, and staring at screens are just like Tylenol — they may distract from the issue but they don’t get to the root of it. I need to be doing fresh air and laughing or crying and working out my thoughts and connecting with people. I need less cake.
I’ve started about a thousand posts and just haven’t managed to finish. One is an advice column, another is about Beth, another is about recipes. Don’t worry, I may be down on life and down on cake, but I still intend to share my marshmallow filling recipe with you.
These will come, hopefully this week.
Church Avenue Chomp 