July 4th 2011 - In Which We Eat

In Ohio my friends and I ate a lot. I don't mean that we ate unnecessarily large portions though, being from the Midwest, that was also true. I mean we spent a lot of time and effort cooking for each other. Pot lucks were frequent in the year before I left and they're something I really miss. Even before I could properly cook these communal meals were something I always looked forward to if only for the warm, easy social aspects of food. For whatever reason - proximity of great restaurants? difficulty in taking cooked food on the subway? - these exhibitions of communal cookery have not been as frequent since I moved to New York.

So it was that on July 4th it was the food and the company, more than the fireworks which were an afterthought for me, that I really enjoyed.

Of course, since one of the hosts was Asian, these pictures are not entirely accurate representations of the evening. By the end it seemed like we'd hardly eaten anything the platters of food were still stacked high. Higher still were our spirits because, really, what's better than great food with great company?

Here's to more nights like this one.