Holiday soirees take their toll. Sure, it’s fun to put new twists on tradition, but there are only so many goth Santas, games of Hannukah pong, and New Year’s Eve raves you can take before your lifeforce starts to wane. That easy-peasy fantasy world in which your parents grew up…
In the state where it’s still illegal to adopt a child if you’re gay and where the hateful, chicken-shit Amendment 2 that defines marriage as the legal union between one man and one woman passed just 14 months ago, it’s safe to say that the LGBT community around here occasionally…
Growing up, I was always a fan of those ubiquitous “best of the year” stories that news outlets put together every December, so I thought it fitting that I give a little something back this year to the thing that has given so much to me through the two-thousand-aughts. Of…
A couple of years ago, I went to a Christmas party in New York City. It wasn’t a dinner party, but more of a “stand around and chat while you swirl wine in a glass and look fancy” kind of deal. I prefer sitting, preferably with my legs up and…
When I was a strapping young buck of 20 or so, I spent my summers cooking at an array of restaurants in a resort town in New York. I cooked for the same reason a lot of people did: so I could go out all night, go to the beach…
Figuring out where to eat dinner can be a major pain in the ass, even if the best restaurants weren’t scattered haphazardly across South Florida. These days it’s stressful to gamble your hard-earned scratch on an unknown restaurant in hopes of discovering the next great joint to hit on a…
“So where’d you get the recipe, anyway?” I asked. My friend Robey was standing at my stove, cooking up a vat of what he said was Bolognese sauce to feed our families. “The internet, actually,” he told me. “I called my mom and asked her to give me hers, but…
I love me some good poultry. I’ve basked in the glory of wings, become reverent in the presence of a well-cooked turkey, waxed lyrical about Thanksgiving leftovers. But it’s right about this time every year that I find out I have a poultry limit. It’s time to flush the bird…
Thanksgiving Day, 5 p.m.: Family members are sprawled on your furniture, belts off, pants unbuttoned, fancy holiday shirts marked by cranberry and gravy spills, making half-assed attempts to argue. Your father-in-law has been in the bathroom for 35 minutes and you’re starting to worry: for him, for your bathroom. You’re…
Dead turkeys are aerodynamic disasters. I chose to prove this many Thanksgivings ago by hurling one at my sister as she ran screaming down the stairs from my Brooklyn apartment after a fight. It was cooked, it was in a broiling pan, and I was unable to get a clean…
I hate chain restaurants, and they seem to be multiplying. Every time I turn around, there’s another squatting smugly across the parking lot from Best Buy or snuggled into the corner of a mall, waiting for trans-fat-hungry customers to order some sort of deep-fried, oversauced platter of bulk-purchased protein, served…
Alex had dropped his menu and was staring at me. I was 17 or 18, visiting Texas for the first time, and we were out grabbing a bite to eat. With the exception of a few family vacations, I’d thus far spent my entire life in the northeast; I grew…
Just because it’s spendy doesn’t make it good, as the series of “Mummy” movies keeps hammering home again and again. But the reverse is true as well: it doesn’t have to cost a ton of money to not suck. Witness the $15,000 film Paranormal Activity for example. What does this…
When I was growing up, ham and I had a difference of opinion. Upon arriving at a holiday soiree at which the main course was ham, I’d fantasize about taking it outside, blindfolding it, stepping back 25 paces or so, and letting loose with an AR-15 rifle on the big…
There’s an episode of Pee-wee’s Playhouse in which Pee-wee is talking about how much he loves fruit salad, and Miss Yvonne says that if he loves it so much, maybe he should marry it. So he does. Now, I like a guy with the courage of his convictions, but for…
For a time, when I was a lad growing up in New York, I went to an obnoxiously upscale grade school called St. Bernard’s (pronounced with Connecticut lockjaw of course, as in BERnerd’s, not BerNARD’S). I still have a copy of the school’s Christmas card from when I was in…
Pulp Fiction: anti-pork propaganda.Pork. Luscious, juicy, tasty pork. So flexible, so wonderful, yet so derided. Order it at dinner, and there’s a good chance someone at your table, having demonstrated their conviction that beef is “better” than pork by really going out on a limb and ordering the filet mignon…
Recently, I tried a small exercise in perception. Specifically, sausage perception. As in, what people think of when they think “sausage”. So I called up a friend. “What’s in sausage, do you think?” I asked him. “Sausage? I don’t know – the crap they can’t sell whole? Lips, hooves, ears…
Meat isn’t always about the gourmet, you know. I mean, dry-aged prime steaks, grilled perfectly and served with a hearty beverage of your choice may be as close to a perfect way to spend some quality eating-time as I can think of, but it’s not the only way to achieve…
Have you ever had one of those moments when you look in your fridge and see that beauty of a steak that you bought a few days ago and forgot about, and it looks a little… funny? And you think, “Well, maybe it will smell all right,” but you know…
“What the hell are you doing?” he asks me. “Getting ready to cook these steaks,” I tell him. “Dude – there’s a grill right outside the door, and you’re heating up a pan? Are you on crack?” Men are supposed to intuitively know how to cook steaks. It’s in our…
Bacon. Say it with me now: “bacon.” Feel happy? Hungry? Of course you do. Because really, what’s better than bacon? It brings salt to the savory, crunch to the flaccid, “B” to the “L” and the “T.” Could you ask more of anything? I think not. And yet, bacon has…
