The Comforts of Home

With the holidays fast approaching and a global pandemic making it impossible for us all to engage in the usual travel plans to be with loved ones (if you have made travel plans, please, I beg you to reconsider them, it is not too late to bail), I've been thinking ceaselessly about the idea of community itself. This year has ascribed more limits than ever on traditional ideas of friendship and relationships, and that means we've needed to reinforce - and in some cases reimagine - what it means to have a community in the first place.

For me, that’s mostly meant a lot of text messages. It means that the group chat four friends and I started way back in March or April has evolved into a miniature mutual aid fund / support system. We've delivered each other groceries. We've brainstormed our way through each other's business dilemmas. We've sent each other gifts and commiserated through loneliness and, on the Saturday that the election news finally broke, we FaceTimed each other with tears streaming down our faces, screaming with joy. And every time I let out a yell at my friends through the phone, a bunch of strangers walking down the sidewalks of Brooklyn yelled back at me. I have lived in New York for 21 years, and I’ve been lucky to experience many moments of beautiful solidarity, but that one felt - for obvious reasons - like the most important one yet.

Someone smarter than me said that with respect to 2020, we're all in the same sea, but we're not all in the same boat. I am immunocompromised, and I'm less scared of dying than I am of living for months or years with lungs worse than the ones I already have or of unknowingly giving someone else a dangerous disease. (I have also spent Thanksgiving Day alone in a hospital! I don’t recommend it! You should do everything you can to make sure your loved ones don’t do the same this holiday season.)

Still, I am relentlessly lucky, and the boat I am in is a very sturdy one, made all the more so by my group chats, by the individual friendships I keep up with through stream of consciousness texts and FaceTimes and Twitter and Instagram DMs, and by my family's own group text established just to make sure everyone is alive and well for the foreseeable future. If this is what I have instead of a holiday, it's still so much more than I might have hoped for.

I would not ever trade a normal year for 2020, but I do want to be grateful for the connections that have strengthened without the distractions of a "normal" world, and for the ability to be more present than I probably ordinarily would be for most of my friends and family, even though it comes in a different forms than I would have expected. I am trying, too, to be grateful for the simplicity of spending a holiday solo. On Thursday, I will cook all the things I love the best: a whole turkey, gravy and dressing; green bean casserole and garlic mashed potatoes and fresh cranberry sauce with orange zest and crispy roasted Brussels sprouts and pie. I'm going to do so without the fear of fucking things up in front of a crowd, or without a specific time that people are coming over, or without the stress of the usual flight to Boston and bus to Provincetown that have comprised the Thanksgivings of recent years for me.

Will I miss my loved ones? Unquestionably. But will that stop me from tradition and from the comforts of home cooking? Absolutely not. One thing that I’m looking forward to is having leftovers “of my own,” eating turkey sandwiches at my leisure and making turkey soup to freeze for later in the season and using the carcass and leftover vegetables to make stock that will help carry me through the dark weeks ahead. It will be a rare chance to cook for the sake of cooking.

I will also be looking forward to my standard Thanksgiving weekend pre-dinner vibe, which is comprised of an all-day cheese and crudité plate for grazing on before dinner itself. Central to that experience is one of the few recipes that my family calls its own. The Flynns take our snack plates extremely seriously, and with them our spreads and dips. This is a recipe that my dad's mom used to make every year at Christmas and that my own mom has made in turn for as long as I can remember; it's a tradition that I've carried with me to many Friendsgivings and that has taken on a new life in my friend circle.

This spread is excellent on crackers, on celery, and in place of cream cheese on half of a toasted bagel; trust me when I say it is more than the sum of its parts. It is a true holiday recipe, which means it offers great comfort and flavor but not a ton of nutritional value. This is how it's meant to be. 

SHRIMP BUTTERFrom the kitchen of Polly Bell, lightly adapted by me

8 oz cream cheese (1 standard package)1/4 lb butter (1 stick) 1. tsp fresh lemon juice2 cloves garlic, crushed (**if you are not a garlic person, use 1. If you are a Garlic Person, use 4. This recipe also gets stronger the longer it sits, so if you make it the night before and let it sit, it will be all the better for it, but remember this when taste-testing!)1 small piece of onion, chopped (I usually use about 1/4 of a medium yellow onion)4 1/2 oz can tiny shrimp (If you can't find/don't have canned tiny shrimp, you can use chopped up cooked fresh or frozen shrimp, but it won't be quite as good. I don't know why.) Salt and pepper, to taste 

Using a hand or stand mixer, cream the butter and cream cheese together. Add lemon juice, garlic, onion, and salt and pepper and stir. Last, add shrimp and blend again using mixer until well mixed.

Chill until ready to serve.

You’re reading “Soup and Despair,” a weekly newsletter by Sarah Flynn and Rebecca Orchant. It’s about food, feelings, and surviving the dark times. If someone forwarded you this email, it’s because they love you and they want you to eat. You can subscribe to it too!