Cool Mum, Newbie, Roomie, our good friend, and I are sitting in a circle right now catching up on life. It’s nice. Our friend is holding Newbie, which is really nice. And we do this every week.
Every Thursday night, we have Family Dinner here where our friends from around the neighborhood gather and get to know each other better. We’re thankful to have a group of friends committed to these Thursday evenings despite their hectic NYC schedules.
At first, we held FD as potlucks, and it was nice having the variety of foods that everyone brought. But we realized that we were spending a lot of time cooking and assembling the food and little time resting and talking.
So, we’ve transitioned to ordering food and splitting the cost, which is usually $5-6 a person. The time spent is well-worth the cost, and we get to sample the culinary delights of the Upper East Side, like Peruvian chicken, healthy Chinese food, and distinctive thin crust pizza (Domino’s).
How often do you gather with friends for meals? Do you think having a Family Dinner would work for you?
SATURDAY, JULY 31
A wonderful day. It was so good that I’ll go ahead and give it [+4 cool points] and submit it to Mommy Poppins for the Awesome Days of Summer contest.
Up until now, our weekends have been spent sequestered in the apartment (we have an infant and a toddler), or at most, going on short trips out. But on this mild and sunny Saturday, we made downtown ours. The whole Cool Fam took a bus down to the East Village. Cool Mum and I debated over a suspicious drink bottle in the back of the bus.
We ate at my favorite breakfast spot where Cool Baby and I can usually be found for Daddy-Buddy Breakfast on most weekends. We left and CB had to go pee-pee (after he denied having to go at the restaurant), so we hit a Starbucks only to find a line of 5 guys ahead of us for the restroom. There was also a kinda crazy lady behind us lamenting that she was “going to go #2 all over herself.” I wrestled with letting her go ahead of us or letting CB go #1 all over himself. Fortunately, CM found a bathroom at a swanky boutique shop (Mart of K).
"Do I look like I have to go pee-pee?"
We walked to Washington Square Park and indulged in what was touted as The World’s Best Brownie at a street fair. It was good, though I am not experienced enough to know what The World’s Best Brownie should taste like (but I’m working on it). Cool Baby played on the playground while us old farts rested our feet.
We walked back east and Cool Mum bought a cheap nifty dress. We had a falafel salad and grape leaves at Mamoun’s and red velvet frozen yogurt (uh-mazing) at the self-serve fro-yo joint next door. Then I really took a leap of faith and bought a hat (more on that later).
We took the bus back north, the same one with the sketchy bottle, and hosted our friends for a BBQ. They brought over Nathan’s cheese-stuffed hot dogs. Whoa.
We need more Saturdays like this. We plan on getting them.
We were pleased with the happenings of the day.
Lunch was a phenomenal piece of chicken and tomato pizza from Maffei’s. It may have been better than the one I had from Two Boots last night (Cool Mum will likely chastise me later for all of the pizza-eating).
One moment before devouring my slice today: I noticed a hair-thin string of what I thought was cheese. And then I realized that it may have been hair-thin because it was a hair. I put the thought out of my mind and went about my business of eating. However, the inspiration for this deeply moving blog post was already set in motion.
What do you do when you find a hair (not yours) in your food?
The other night, we hosted our friend Polina (aka Truly Cool Parent), who was in town for New York Fashion Week. She came to dinner with her wardrobe stylist-slash-art director Nikki. We dined on coconut chicken curry and the finest durn cupcakes in New York City (my apologies for rocking the worlds of Magnolia and Billy’s advocates).
Polina and Nikki are the queens of fashion photography in Indianapolis, so Cool Mum and I quizzed them on their line of work because the only thing we are more clueless about than parenting is fashion. We loved hearing stories as micro as working out details for a shoot and as grand as effecting cultural change in Indianapolis.
Since we moved up here, fashion has occupied more space in my consciousness. Not that it ever occupied much. (What do you mean Hypercolor shirts went out of style? You press the shirts, AND THEY CHANGE COLOR! These are shirts of the future, if anything.)
I even went on an online clothes shopping binge towards the end of last year. Winter was coming, and I didn’t want to alternate the same two sweaters that I did during our first winter here. Thanks to Slickdeals, I picked up better-fitting jeans, Merino wool sweaters, two corduroy blazers, a wool pea coat, and a crate of slightly irregular purple Z. Cavariccis (no i didn’t).
Despite my shopping spree, I still feel fashionably inadequate; my clothes just aren’t cool enough. It doesn’t help that a lot of friends here work in fashion and design and always look swank. And it especially doesn’t help that after dinner with Polina and Nikki, Cool Mum asked me if I think that my hairstyle is outdated. Apparently, she does because this is not a typical after-dinner cleanup question.
Even when I have decent clothes, my fashion sense is bankrupt. I could be the all-time champion of Project Run-away. One day I went to work sporting a nicer shirt (that happened to be striped) and my cool new pinstripe dress pants. CM pointed out (after work, of course) that I shouldn’t wear striped tops and bottoms together. I checked online, and one commenter on a forum called the combination “horrific.” That makes me long for the days when CM called my clothes choices “not bad.”
How’s your fashion sense: Fetching or retching?
For our 8 years of wedded bliss, Cool Mum and I have always been Thanksgiving visitors. Either with our families in Florida or strangers (now friends) last year in NYC. This year, we’re hosting our very first Thanksgiving – if I can get get off the computer and go buy a turkey. Just kidding, we’re all sorts of prepared, having bought everything we need from the store before it closed last night.
Just as the first Thanksgiving was a melding of cultures, the first Cool Thanksgiving will be a multicultural event (minus the taking of land and relocation to reservations). The nations of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Japan, and the Philippines will be represented, along with the European melting pot that is Cool Mum. To the right is the feast that will feed us later today. For our Japanese friends, this is their first American Thanksgiving. At least we can say that there’s nowhere to go but up for their future Thanksgivings.
The feature of the feast is Slow Cooker Turkey Breast. Last night, I picked out a frozen turkey breast with gravy at the surprisingly chill grocery store (lots of people have left NYC for the holiday). I was afraid that it might not thaw in time, but I thawed it in the sink with no problem. This morning, I put the turkey breast and gravy in the crock pot, and it should be all done by 3:00. I took a lot of liberty with the recipe, like stirring onion soup mix in with the gravy. But onion soup mix is like the type O negative of ingredients, and slow-cooking is nearly foolproof.
The sides will include stuffing that I’m still debating when to put in the turkey breast, peas, corn, and sweet potatoes with cinnamon and brown sugar. To drink, we have Coca-Cola beverages, like Coca-Cola (and nothing else), sugar-free Hawaiian punch, and tap water with ice. Dessert will be a fresh-baked, long-frozen Sara Lee pumpkin pie and Fla-Vor-Ice.
This Thanksgiving meal would probably bring Paula Deen to tears, but we’re not sweating it. We’re just looking forward to spending good time with our friends and thanking God for everything He’s done, which is every good thing in our lives.
The Cool Fam wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving! What are you doing today?
