Famous People #79: Latkes, caviar, PPCs
Kaitlyn: What did I bring to Ashley’s casual holiday gathering in her and Bran’s new apartment, which is actually a little bit closer to my apartment than her old apartment was but emotionally it feels farther because I have to get myself over Ocean Parkway? I’ll tell you: NOT Melissa Clark’s molasses-stout Bundt cake, which I prepared the night before while making insane final changes to my book (haha, preorder!), and which got stuck to the sides of the pan so badly that I had to claw it out with my claws. This was really humiliating because all the while that it was baking I was thinking, every woman should have a Bundt pan, it just makes anything look a little impressive, finally I have some really good advice to give to another homemaker. Well, you know what they say about counting your chickens (don’t), and about making plans under the watchful eyes of God (he’ll laugh!). In the morning, I ended up hustling down to Avenue X to get some cheap caviar and some crème fraîche. I also picked up some classic Lays and some teeny-tiny bowls with teeny-tiny spoons at a nearby 99-cent store. (Melissa Clark says to use “small batch” potato chips for a chip-crème-caviar appetizer, but as I implied, we are on the outs.)
Lizzie: I don’t have a Bundt pan but if I do a mental scan of my kitchen cabinets, I can’t think of anywhere one might fit. My landlord’s architect (lol) gave me very narrow cabinets. Are Bundt pans unwieldy? They seem unwieldy. I do, however, like making things that look impressive. So I made Melissa Clark’s “Perfect Black and White Cookies” and Carla Lalli Music’s “Pink Party Cookies,” or “PPCs.” Matt helped glaze the B&Ws because he’s more patient with sticky things and he has a steadier hand. They actually looked pretty good! I don’t have a picture. Later I went over to Ideal Food Basket to get one of those aluminum trays to carry all the cookies in. Ideal, in its charmingly nonsensical way, stocks them next to the kitty litter, and a little too high for me to reach comfortably. I feel like I’m always buying these aluminum trays, as if I run a catering business. Does anyone have a better way to transport a bunch of food to someone else’s house when you have to take a bus there? It would’ve taken like 7 plates to hold all these cookies. I also bought a bag of Doritos because I got worried our contributions to the party were too sugar-heavy.
Kaitlyn: When Nathan and I arrived at the party we were unsurprisingly the very first ones there, having loitered on the corner of the street for several minutes waiting for it to be 3:59 PM. Inside, the air was thick with onion because Bran was standing at the counter grating like 12 onions into a kiddie-pool-sized bowl. He claimed he felt fine because he was wearing contacts. I started weeping. Nathan left the room and came back a mess. Ashley apologized and I said something absolutely incoherent about how I love “behind-the-scenes vibes” and I always want to be seated near where the waiters keep their lighters and Diet Dr. Peppers. I was crying so much!!
Lizzie: We got there around 5, I think. I was aiming for a fashionable but still inner-circle-y 4:30, but as I said earlier, we took the bus there, and the buses are only predictable in the sense that you can predict it will take longer for you to get there than you want it to, and longer than Google Maps says it will. While we were on the bus, an older woman came on (“came aboard”?) who happened to know the couple sitting in front of us. The meeting seemed spontaneous, but also planned. One half of the couple said to the woman as soon as she saw her, “Oh, this is for you,” and handed her a bag before the woman was even able to sit down. I thought, Since you’re already comfortably sitting, why don’t you just hold onto the bag for a sec until this woman can get settled, instead of burdening her with more items to hold on the bus? I shouldn’t really have an opinion. Honestly, the woman seemed fine with the extra bag. If I had to guess, I would say the bag was filled with cat stuff, because for the rest of the bus ride they talked about cats, and rescuing cats, and that seemed to be how they were connected. They all got off at the same stop, which once again made me wonder why there was such a rush to hand off the bag. A few stops later we were at the party.
Kaitlyn: I would say there were about six romantic couples in attendance, and a handful of hot, single people, and everyone was so nice except for Ashley and Colin when they were talking to each other about iPhone screen protectors. That was a tense moment and we didn’t know where it was going. Perfect for a holiday party! I laughed all night and I stood up the whole time and I didn’t take notes. I do remember a hot topic of conversation being the all-beef diet of a person who was not present—he grills the beef late at night at high heat, such that sizzling sounds can be heard throughout the apartment of someone who was present. Or he blends it up in a NutriBullet and drinks it like a smoothie.
Lizzie: The smoothie-meat convo was a big moment. It felt like we were getting to the good stuff; the little gossips about nothing that really matters. Food-wise, there was also the biggest bowl of dip I’ve ever seen in my life, and some talk of Essentia water, if you consider that a food. Someone said it had a “flat” flavor, and they meant it as a compliment.
Kaitlyn: Ashley hugged and welcomed latecomers while simultaneously flipping latkes in boiling oil, which I thought was amazing and I told her so. Over the course of the night, Lizzie and I also luxuriated in compliments, not to brag. Multiple people were shocked that the party had some $7 caviar in the Doritos area and said “oh, caviar?” And then they ate a little bit of it, as a compliment to me, even though they didn’t specifically know who had brought it or why. Similarly, a high-energy man came over to Lizzie and said, holding a PPC aloft, “What is this? It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.” He was apparently serious. I laughed at that a lot, even though the PPCs were obviously phenomenal. Matt was like, “someone take this guy to a restaurant.”
Lizzie: Of course I appreciated his enthusiasm, but there really was no magic baking secret here. The PPCs are basically just butter and sugar, two things that are known to taste good. If you creamed a bunch of sugar into butter and then ate it, you would probably be like, “yeah, pretty good.”
But I think the unbridled cookie enthusiasm is indicative of the party’s general feeling. Everyone seemed at-ease, ready to mingle but not over-mingle, confidently content with wherever the night might take them. There was mood lighting, Kylie Minogue, and people who have known each other since high school, many of whom were doing something impressive in the medical or legal fields. We didn’t get a lot of drama, but we did get a warm fuzzy feeling.
Kaitlyn: This really was your classic intimate-holiday-celebration-and-housewarming. We learned a little bit about what kind of physics someone is studying in grad school. We tried to figure out exactly how tall each guest was by eye-balling it. We told everyone about our amazing idea for a podcast called The Amazing Race and they loved it… At the start of each episode we pick a location in New York City, we bicker about the most efficient way to travel there, and then we see. The sounds of the city provide a rich soundtrack; our eventual reuniting at some great place like Goldie’s bar or Amelia’s house in the Bronx serves as both reward and resolution. All the while, The Verge’s transportation reporter Andy Hawkins does little narrative bits about infrastructure and subway repairs and the dangers of riding a Citibike without a helmet. (Or at least he agreed to that role when we first started bringing this up all the time like five years ago.) You get it. You would love it. You would sort out the legal problems for us!
Lizzie: The podcast idea comes up basically anytime we meet someone new. We really don’t force it into the conversation; it’s just that we always find ourselves in settings where people are talking about going somewhere. Sometimes I feel the need to say “We know the name is taken,” because often when we start our pitch you can see the question mark cloud their eyes.
It’s relevant anyway to the end of the party, because I think the people who left the earliest had the longest train rides home.
Kaitlyn: When a party starts at 4 PM in winter, you naturally think that it’s 2 in the morning when it’s actually only 7:45. Then, when you find out it’s 7:45, you feel like you have your whole life in front of you!!!!! Of course, only a little while later it’s 9:30 and all the wine bottles are empty and you’re wondering what to do now that you’ve been drinking for five and a half hours on a stomach full of creamy dips. Well…. whatever comes after that point is not a big secret but just a little bit of a secret and I don’t want to talk about it right here.