The Kitchen Vote

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