We can all agree that New Years Eve is very often awful. Fancy parties are often a letdown, taxis are impossible, there are those poor souls wearing diapers in Times Square. Personally, there was that time on the cusp of 2011 where my roommates and I hosted a party for all of our friends, decorated the house, and made a bunch of tasty snacks, hoping for the grandest of times. I passed out face-down on my bed, gold sequined dress painted onto my 22 year-old-body, before the clock struck twelve. I hear it was a good party; I kissed only my pillow.
My second year in New York—three or four years after the sequin incident—my friend Brette and I decided to proactively give up. We didn’t feel like dealing with drunken masses or crowded streets, didn’t want to pretend to have fun when in reality all we wanted was to be sitting on a couch with a glass of wine and a pal. We’d cook dinner just the two of us, at her apartment. There would be too much wine and as extravagant a menu as we liked and we would not have to deal with a single other person.
We’re now on our third New Years Dinner (we took a break one year when I went to San Francisco and made Gabrielle Hamilton’s mayo-slathered grilled cheeses alongside a few bottles of Champagne for Shay and Tom), and it has become what feels like our hacked plan to avoid badness on a usually-bad night. Maybe I’m just exaggerating about how bad it is but I don’t think I am; the prospect of all those heightened expectations stresses me out. Just have a few people over instead!! Our meal has expanded to include more friends and more dishes over the course of a couple years, but still feels, as we like to say in the dinner party biz, intimate. Cooking is as much of the action, at least for us or at least for me, as the eating—I’ve always maintained that this is the best sort of dinner party. We dress up but anticipate a mess. The first year we went to Estela for a glass of wine at 1 AM and all I remember was looking around the room and whispering (yelling) to Brette: It’s so dark in here.
There’s also of course this issue of this year being Very Very Bad on a number of different scales, and when things are bad it’s good to huddle together with 2 or 8 friends so you feel safe and you feel like someone kind is feeding you. I don’t want to have to stare at a bunch of sparkly dresses and heels tonight and think about the future!!!! But I think a bunch of cheese will be a good respite.
When you strip away the bullshit (and the impending catastrophe that is our current political climate ha ha), New Years Eve is wonderful. There are few other secular holidays whose sole purpose is all-out celebration; no better time to cook something richer or more complicated or more over-the-top than you usually would. That first year, we made a cream-laden chard gratin and fancy butternut squash toasts from ABC kitchen, the sort of food we loved to eat but would rarely set out to make for ourselves. We ate it lazily and messily, empty wine bottles strewn around the kitchen, chatting and gossiping and feeling the warmth of a very good dinner party, when you look around and think this is all very nice.
As of now: We have already prepped a number of things and I made the pie dough and we parcooked the rice and Brette did a million other things before I even got to the city because she’s a brilliant organized planner. Today we get to go to the market and the bakery and yesterday I went to the wine store and bought eight bottles of wine of which we drank two last night so maybe we need more now. It’s nice to be back in New York, weird and comforting and lightly stressful and I missed it. Crazy year huh! Go cook some food with your friends.
I want to do a whole “roundup of my favorite pieces of the year” thing but honestly ugh it stresses me out so I guess just read my Sqirl feature if you haven’t! Or maybe this essay on healthy living blogs for the hairpin. That’s fine. Be safe and have fun. Start hydrating now !!