Friends,
good morning from New York, for one more week before your good friend Sarah
goes home to Minnesota to celebrate the holidays with her family.
You
need to understand something. Working in
this uber-intense NYC Kitchen of mine only prepares me for going home to my
family. We are a crazy family. No, I mean it, there is crazy, and then there
is Moxie crazy, and we, are, I swear, the worst. We are the best, do not get me wrong---I love
my family, and I am part of them and come from them, but we are, collectively,
I swear, the very worst family you would ever want to cook with, if you have no
experience with chaos in a Kitchen. It can be overwhelming to newcomers, which
is why I do not introduce my latest man of the year to the family or to many of
you, ever. There is not enough bourbon
in the world to repair a relationship after that. I swear it is one of the reasons my
short-term marriage ended, because my ex-husband honest to God brought up our
family Christmas cooking traditions in marriage counselling, which made me
burst out laughing so hard, so long, the tears just kept coming down my face as
I actually snorted at him and fell onto the floor off the therapist’s couch,
which does not contribute to successful repair of a relationship that never
should have been one in the first place.
His pain at just WATCHING our family cook together was just too much for
him. That is when I knew the relationship
was doomed, doomed I tell you, and that is when I knew, KNEW that I belonged in
a Kitchen.
Let
me set the scene, shall we? Imagine me at my feistiest, then multiply that
times 14-25 people, all in one house, all shouting and cooking and mocking each
other simultaneously. THAT is how it is
when we cook at Christmas at my mom’s and stepdad’s house. Do you now see why I love my NYC Kitchen so
much?
At
our house, there is no serene, Currier & Ives Christmas of quiet cocktails
by the fire. There is no civilized exchange
of hearing about each other’s accomplishments at work or how the kids are doing
in school. No. There is shouting and mocking and making
rough fun of each other all day long. You will hear, “Sarah, did you want to
put on a red leather bra for Christmas this year?” followed by, “You kiss your
wife with that mouth?” and, “Let me get you another shot of insulin to go with
that shot of brandy,” until Mom starts loudly singing songs about how Jesus
Loves You to drown out our sassing so that my nieces and nephews do not start
asking questions about what an alcoholic is. And for the record, I still have
that red leather bra, and it is hot as hell.
But that bra is for Hanukkah, not Christmas. Everybody knows that.
With
this kind of chaos in a Kitchen, the other nerds in my family decided that we
must have some sort of civility established, at least some MINIMAL framework of
decisionmaking that was, of course, fair.
Friends, I give you the Moxie Family Annual Christmas Menu Vote.
Don’t
think I’m kidding.
Each
year, Mom distributes a list of at least 40 items which each member of the
family must vote on, in order to come to agreement on which 15-18 things we
will be making as a family. Each year,
the columns have had different answer options available. When we all lived in different parts of the
worlds, options for voting “yes” included “oui, si, ja, and yes.” Answers for “no” included “no, ne, nyet, and
WTF.” That last answer got used quite a
bit when she tried too hard to incorporate quinoa into our menu options. Mom has had it with the shenanigans of my
siblings and me and has streamlined the process now. WTF is no longer an option, unless it is
written into the Comments line. Mom also
overrules anything she wants to, which, of course, she should be able to do,
because she is mom after all. Note the second tab of the spreadsheet, where all
of the voting results get auto-ranked so that we can have assignments
given. No, I am not kidding, and you
should know that by now.
Mom
assigns items and grocery lists, she assigns teams of who is making what, and
she tells each of us from our various locations in the country or world what we
will be bringing from our new home cities.
My brother Pete brings avocados, citrus and wine from California. I used to bring chocolates from Belgium. We all do our part.
We
are nerds, NERDS I tell you, and this is why we are ferociously successful in
business while also able to navigate extremely different personalities in the
Kitchen. Some years it is all too much
for me, and I end up down in the basement bar with my stepdad, just staring at
each other, drinking Jack Daniels, because I cannot take the noise any more,
and neither can he. Some years I am in
the throes of it, in charge of the Kitchen, testing, tasting, stirring,
chopping. This year I have stepped back,
because I am far away again, and because this is the first year our family has
sorted out some really difficult background issues related to big changes, and we
will be coming together again for the first time in a couple of years. It will not always be easy to do that, because,
as in any family, there are sensitive places and topics that must be carefully
navigated, and we will do those things, as we chop and cut and plate our
dinners, together. I love the Kitchen
because, for me, for us, for my family and for my Friends, the Kitchen is the
place where we always come back together, no matter what happened, no matter
what went wrong in the past.
And
so, as I look forward to being, once again, back in my NYC Kitchen with my
favorite Chefs, I also look very forward to being back home in Minnesota,
surrounded by familiar chaos, in a Kitchen, with the people I love best. I feel blessed, Friends, to be welcome in so
many Kitchens, to be able to hug so many people with so many stories and jokes
and so much love. Cross your fingers,
though, that mom’s quinoa salad did not make the cut. And pass the bourbon.
With
lots of love from our Kitchen to yours,
Your
Good Friend Sarah
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