early bird special
The older I get, the more I appreciate having friends who can hang with me while I party like a geriatric. I’m tired. My feet hurt. Increasingly, late dinners and parties feel like work. At around 10:00 PM, no matter where I am, my internal clock starts screaming that I should be heading back towards my house.
Kate Moss once said, famously, that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Not to disagree with such a preeminent authority on food, but in my experience, lots of things taste better than skinny feels, like, for starters, buffalo wings and popcorn shrimp. Kate inspired me to come up with my own personal motto, and here it is: Nothing tastes as good as my bed feels at 9:00 PM. Not quite the same ring, but it works. I’m going to get it engraved on some jewelry.
Last year we went to the Crab Feed at my athletic club with our friends Chris and Lauren. We ate like pigs and swore we’d be back a year later. Tonight, the four of us feasted again, this time, with Kathryn and Erskine. I arrived at 5:30 PM to find Chris at our table, alone, in the middle of a dimly lit room full of older couples. Game on.
“Crab Feed” is a bit of a misnomer, as they also have prime rib, which I enjoy primarily as a vehicle for horseradish. We took off our rings and piled our plates high. I hit the crab three times. Then I hit the dessert bar. During dinner, I looked around at my friends, and felt a sense of warmth. I understood these people, and they understood me. What could be better, than to be understood? Then I looked around and noticed a table of three couples in their sixties, enjoying the same dinner. Five of the six were wearing red sweaters. That would be us some day. The thought, disturbingly, filled me with comfort.
lauren and tom discuss mah jongg
I ate so much that by the end of dinner I had to lean backwards in order to breathe. When I got home and took my pants off, my body immediately expanded, like when Pillsbury crescent rolls expand after you break the seal on the canister. My jeans sighed in relief, and then crumpled to the floor, having given heroic service.
Crab Feed 2014. It’s on the calendar.
**On a wholly unrelated note, please be sure to visit next week as I document my three day juice cleanse.
yoonanimous 
Wait, why did the rings come off? When I saw that I immediately thought it was one of THOSE nights out. Yeah, I got problems.
i’m trying to think of what you mean, and can only land on perverted or violent interpretations. we take the rings off so they don’t get all crabby
Ahhhhhh, got it… I thought it was some kind of update to the key parties of 70s. Where they put all keys in a bag and whoever’s key you pull ( in this case maybe rings) is who you go home with. Aren’t you glad I took a nice dinner out w friends to extremely low levels? Sorry…
Oh, like Ice Storm!
OMG! Laughing so hard (the juice cleanse thing and the pic of your pants on the floor)! First of all, the picture of the crab cake and crab legs… I’m dying here and SO hungry now! Secondly, couldn’t agree more about eating prime rib as a vehicle for horseradish! I thought I was the only one who felt like that though. I never knew I liked horseradish until I ate prime for the first time:-)
i feel strongly that horseradish should be eaten with more food items. linds got me the Roots cookbook and there is an entire section of recipes using horseradish, which I am surprised to learn exists outside of a cream form
Maybe you could share some of the ideas in your cookbook sometime;-) Actually I’m not sure I’ve used it on anything besides steak and prime rib or and when I make my cocktail sauce and on roast beef. Hmmmm…
let’s get real here ok? what kate moss knows about eating i could fit in the palm of my hand. and i knew it the first time i read your words yoona…you are my kind of gal. that plate of food at the top of this post is a terrible thing to do to your loyal readership on a friday morning…but i love the abuse. but somehow i’ve found myself enmeshed w a group of women who eat like birds and i wonder, what on earth did i do to deserve THIS torment? was it the time i secretly thought someone’s baby was homely?? anyway, ordering in a restaurant is a cruel jest. i wish you lived in sf and wanted to go get tacos. happy weekend!
i fundamentally don’t understand people who don’t enjoy food. i’ve met people like that and they are fine, but i certainly don’t go out of my way to hang out with them. just as bad are people who love food but can actually stop themselves from stuffing their faces–what is that all about? lauren and kathryn are actually both like that but they try not to make me feel too bad about my fast, voracious eating. anyway, about your friends. i don’t know what to tell you my dear, except to tell you that i empathize. cuz just came back from SF, had a fabulous time…
my co workers laugh at me bc whenever we are at a dept luncheon (fairly frequently) i spend most of the time w my emptied plate in front of me while they are gently dipping their breaded calamari in tartar sauce (another sadly underused condiment…at least in california). i say it’s because i was raised w brothers who could make a school of pirhana look like the farm leagues. truly, if my friends weren’t so fab, i’d skip the torture and just dump them for a band of rugby players.
Here, here! As you know, I refuse to have dinner w/ anyone who (1) won’t agree to eat at a place that takes reservations; and (2) won’t agree to make that reservation prior to 6:15 pm. As a result, I think, our partners and spouses haven’t had dinner together in about a year because Andrew always wants to meet at 8 pm. There’s just virtually nothing in this world that is interesting to me outside my home past 9 pm. And there’s a lot of good TV at that time. If that makes me old and boring, I can live with that. And WTF with Kate Moss saying things like that. If Oprah says it, ok, but Kate Moss, obnoxious! It’s like Warren Buffet saying “Nothing tastes as good as rich feels”–fuck you! BTW I was thinking about doing this 3 week healthy food cleanse in Whole Living this month. I should talk to you. I feel like it would be easier if someone else was involved in the same idiocy.
well clearly this is why we get along socially–we are both old before our time and ok with it. i’m doing a 3 day juice cleanse starting this tuesday. all the juices are delivered to your house. want in? and i definitely think that should be warren buffet’s personal motto.
Yoona,
Good friends, crab, prime rib, horseradish, early to bed.
Sounds like the perfect night!
Now I’m hungry…
Red
you nailed it. it was the perfect night!