First Friday Feast
A New Year's Resolution to Brighten Your Life and Maybe Even Repair the World
Happy New Year! It’s time to reassess, start fresh, and, yes, make resolutions. It’s also time for the fourth-annual Happy Wanderer New Year’s lamentation. Why does our culture think of January as a time for Lenten abstention, rigorous regimens, and meticulous monitoring of our diets? Why do our resolutions so often focus on our physical health, to the exclusion of all the other ways we could make life more joyous? I believe that we improve ourselves and the world not through constriction and sacrifice, but through generosity and connection with others.
A few months ago I was inspired by Samin Nosrat’s article about the weekly dinner she hosts for friends. Now, I am not a patch on Nosrat, cooking- or hosting-wise, but I figured I could manage a monthly dinner. And so the First Friday Feast was born: From 6 to 8pm on the first Friday of every month, my husband, Matt, and I serve a casual dinner to friends.
Just Come
Nosrat’s article “marshall[ed] me the way that I was going.” I have long despaired at our culture’s predilection for canceling plans in order to hunker down alone at home. This happened to a friend; she came up with a lovely idea—a bimonthly poetry-discussion group—and three times in a row everyone except a couple of us RSPV’ed no or canceled at the last minute. Or friends try to get together, life gets in the way, and so we keep postponing our meet-ups, sometimes indefinitely.
So I established a rule for the First Friday Feast: Just come!
If your kids are visiting or you have out-of-town guests, bring them!
If you can only stop by for fifteen minutes, wonderful! We will be happy to see you for as much time as you have!
If you didn’t RSVP, no worries! We have room!
Finally, no need to shop or bake. We don’t want you to bring anything. Just come!1
Tips for Success
Want to try hosting a meet-up of your own? Here are some strategies:
Start out with a large guest list to ensure a good crowd. Every month we invite a couple dozen people, about half of whom have been able to come each time so far. What if everyone shows up at once, you may be wondering? All the better, I say!
To avoid protracted negotiations about who can come when—and frustrating attempts to reschedule when someone inevitably discovers a conflict—I decided to pick a time and stick with it no matter what. Having a set time means that guests can put it on the calendar and plan ahead. And if someone can’t make it this month, no worries—we’ll see them next time!
Because your guests might not all know one another (there is very little overlap between my knitting club and Matt’s STEM coworkers, for example), it helps to share conversation starters:
What is something cool about your country of origin or hometown that other people probably don’t know?
What is one of your hidden talents?
Or, alternately, what is something you’re bad at no matter how hard you try?
What is something unusual that makes you really happy?
What is a belief you hold that differs from your political tribe?
Resist the urge to get all fancy (unless that is your thing, of course). In our case, we have enough dishes for sixteen guests. Any more than that and I will unapologetically bring out the paper plates and plastic cups. I also set up a self-serve buffet instead of trying to plate up the food myself.
If you don’t enjoy cooking and/or are short on time, you can rely on make-ahead dishes and store-bought items, like a cheese platter. Everyone loves cheese, right?
I am not a dessert person, so I never fuss over dessert. For our first dessert, I just put four different kinds of local chocolates into bowls and told guests to assemble their own “chocolate flights.”
And if this still sounds like too much effort, just invite people for potluck, drinks, snacks, football (to watch or to play), a walk, cards, a board or role-playing game, or coffee. The point is not to impress friends with our culinary prowess, but to commit to regular get-togethers, in whatever form works best for us.
Menu Ideas
To help you get started, here are our first three menus, with links to recipes:
The Inaugural First Friday Feast
Hummus and pita
Cheese and crackers
Stuffed grape leaves with lemon wedges (store-bought)
Louise’s carrot-ginger soup (recipe below)
Chocolate flights
An Advent Banquet
Patrice’s maple-glazed nuts with sage
Fig-eggplant caponata2
Sourdough and fruit breads (made by our neighbor Ueli, a retired baker)
Salad with goat cheese, toasted walnuts, and black olives
An American New Year’s Celebration
Guacamole, store-bought salsa, and chips
Pepper cheese and bread
Juliana’s church-picnic southwest-style salad
Good Welcome, Good People
Hey extroverts! Guess what?! There is a TOTAL RAGER going on over there! Do you see it? It’s right over there! There’s awesome music, a huge buffet, dancing, karaoke, laser tag, paintball, and lots of new people to meet. Go on—join them! Have fun!
. . .
Are they gone?
Great! Because I have a secret message for us introverts.3 It’s true, parties are tough for us. After an hour or so we get all peopled out and want to make like a tree and leave. But this doesn’t mean that we should avoid parties or the extroverts who invite us. It has become sadly common for the extremely online to denigrate and dunk on extroverts. This is a shame, because we need extroverts! They perform an important service for us homebodies: They get us out and about and enjoying new experiences. Think about the last time an extroverted friend brought you along to her book exchange, beading group, Pilates class, or private tour of a castle.4 Admit it: Whatever your initial hesitations, you wound up having a terrific time, right?
So the next time an extrovert invites us to something, let’s say yes. Better yet, to paraphrase David Bowie, we can be extroverts just for one day and host our own First Friday Feast (or Second Saturday Supper, Thirsty Third Thursday, or Monthly Monday Munching). As my favorite travel writer, Rick Steves, advises, “Make yourself an extrovert, even if you’re not. . . . Be a catalyst for adventure and excitement. Meet people. Don’t wait for cultural experiences—reach out and make them happen.” In our isolated, polarized, screen-addled era, there is no more radical act for repairing our world and ourselves than gathering together, because “Good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people.”
How about you, readers? Are you in? And I’m curious: What is one of your hidden talents? Or, alternately, what is something you’re bad at no matter how hard you try? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
The Tidbit
Another way we can make hosting easier on ourselves is to repeat favorite recipes. Our guests won’t mind—in fact, they might discover that they like knowing what to expect! (Then again, I would think this; I am one of those people who always orders the exact same dishes at restaurants.)
Anyway, after our inaugural First Friday Feast, several guests said they would be happy to have carrot-ginger soup every month. This quick recipe comes from my wonderful mother-in-law, Louise, who is always on the lookout for delicious vegetarian dishes she can make for me when I visit. The soup is light and has a little gingery zing. I have rewritten and adapted it slightly. The recipe serves four with leftovers for lunch the next day, but it can be easily doubled for a party.
Louise’s Carrot-Ginger Soup
Ingredients
For the soup:
4T/50gms unsalted butter
1 shallot, finely minced
1 small clove garlic, finely minced with 1tsp salt to make a paste
1 large knob (at least the size of a baby’s fist) ginger, peeled and minced
1-1/2lbs/750gms carrots (about 5 large carrots), peeled and minced (or grated in a food processor to save time)
zest from 1 orange
4c/1liter vegetable broth (I use Better Than Bouillon)
salt and freshly-ground black pepper to taste
For the topping:
about 1c/250ml mixture of crème fraîche and full-fat Greek yogurt (I do 1/2c of each)
about 1/2c chopped fresh dill
Method
In a large stockpot, melt the butter and then add the shallot. Sprinkle some salt over everything and sauté until translucent. Add in the garlic and ginger and sauté a minute or two more.
Add in the carrots, stir thoroughly and sprinkle some more salt and some pepper over everything. Sauté briefly, then add the vegetable broth and orange zest.
Cover the pot and simmer for at least half an hour, until the carrots are soft. Meanwhile, mix the crème fraîche and yogurt in one bowl, and put the chopped dill in another bowl and have them ready on the side.
Purée the soup with an immersion blender and test for seasonings, adding salt and pepper if necessary. Serve the soup topped with a scoop of the crème fraîche mixture and a sprinkling of dill.
This rule has been more honored in the breach than in the observance—or at least our dog thinks so, given that friends have brought him such delectable treats as dried ostrich meat, beef “mini-burgers” with chia seeds and kale, and duck jerky. Incidentally, Matt thinks that any society that supplies ostrich meat to dogs is perhaps tipping over into decadence.
My recipe is an adaptation of one from an old Cooking Light magazine. It is not available online, but look for it in a future post.
People are often surprised to hear that I am an introvert, because I am not at all shy and will gladly shoot the breeze with any stranger who crosses my path. An anecdote: One June, Matt, our son, Noah, and I were moving Casey out of the dorm. The book-stuffed IKEA bags were too heavy for me, so I left the schlepping to the men and waited at a picnic table outside. Another mom sat down, and she and I got to talking. A bit later Casey found me and started laughing: “That’s just like mom! You leave her alone for half an hour and she finds a new bestie!”
Yes, these are all personal examples. Thank you to my dear, extroverted friend Hà!
What a lovely idea, Mari! We have friends who arrange a monthly happy hour at different bars in Pittsburgh for whoever wants to come. It's the same idea, but even less work.
What a fabulous idea!!! As I will be moving to a new area in the next year or so I am very nervous about how to make new friends. I don’t want to rely on my son and his wife to be my only social circle, though I love their friends! Having done a big move over 30 years ago having young children at that time gave me an in with other moms and we are still close. I won’t have that this time. But I could do a dinner to meet neighbors and hopefully choir people etc. On a completely random note do you remember Dorian Lake? He showed up at an Ember rehearsal last night, we are doing another video game concert with NJPAC so he came back to the choir to sing with us!! So nice when former Ember people rejoin if only for a short time. I am so going to miss my Ember peeps!!!