Solstice Party
We give certain parties at fixed times of year. We give a Derby party; we give a party for the participants and their significant others at the end of my juried intensive poetry workshop in June. Our biggest party is the garden party at the weekend after the 4th of July. Then around the solstice we give a party.Supposedly thirty people are coming, but always somebody gets sick or decides at the last moment something more exciting is available. I make a cassoulet from Julia Child’s recipe every year and Woody makes his grandma’s noodle kugel. Usually we have roast beef, some good cheeses, a shrimp dish and some kind of salad. This year it will be a green bean-cranberry-feta-pecan salad. I make a chocolate pie. People bring a dish or a beverage. It is always a great winter feast. The cassoulet takes me two days, but it is worth it. Years ago, I had a friend in Brooklyn who made that every New Years Eve, and I loved it. Mine is a bit different, more classic I guess, but it’s a dish that you can vary quite a bit. If you don’t know it, it’s a southern French dish based on Northern beans, with pork, salt pork, lamb, sausage and in our case, duck with many herbs and spices. It’s long slow cooked, several of the components cooked separately before you put it all together and finish it off with breadcrumbs and parsley making a crust on the top. The cats have adjusted to Malkah’s death. Efi was the one hardest hit – Malkah was her adoptive mother as well as later on her lesbian lover. They did everything together – ate together, slept together, groomed and washed each other. But everybody gets more attention now. I was medicating Malkah three times a day, often with a struggle after a search through her favorite hiding places when she knew it was time to get her medicine. Puck observed and smelled me roasting the beef for tomorrow and when it came out of the oven to cool, he stood guard over it to keep Xena from getting any. For two and a half hours he watched over the roast beef and was rewarded with a piece when it went into the fridge for the night. This week I wrote a couple of poems and a new short story, set in the late 60s when ferrying guys to Canada who were fleeing the draft or deserting after a tour of duty in Vietnam was a necessary and risky duty. Last Sunday morning I went to Torah study with Rabbi Alan Ullman, He’s very bright and digs deep into the texts, so it’s enlightening and fun. We were actually exploring a passage from Talmud this time. He comes several times a year to the Cape and I try to take part. I missed November because I was very sick with that flu-ish thing Woody and I picked up on our Midwestern trip. The party was last night and it was good. People brought lots to eat and drink as well as what we provided. The cassoulet came out the best yet. I made enough to freeze a good bit – I do that intentionally for two reasons. We like having it with Dale and Stephen about a week later and if you make as much as my biggest pot will hold, it can have everything in it that makes it terrific. Usually there’s enough so we can have a two person final meal out of it some night when we get back here late and can just heat it up for a great supper. All 30 people invited came. The party circulated through four places: the diningroom where the food and drink were, the kitchen where some people like to hang out, the livingroom and the adjoining sunporch, the coolest place. I spent time in everyplace but the kitchen. I had spent most of the day in the kitchen plus I like to sit at parties. I am not much for standing a long time or standing and balancing a paper plate loaded with food and a drink in the other hand. Today we’re going to Aida, which I’ve never seen. It plays on the big screen in the W.H.A.T. theater. Then we’ll come home and eat leftovers – some roast beef, some noodle kugel and make a salad. The cats are still mad about being shut in last night while the paper was raging. All except Puck. He sat in the kitchen all day and had a bite of roast beef, a bissel gravlax, a shrimp, a little pork, a little lamb. From his point of view, it was a great day and he was glad to sleep it off.