I'll Drink to That

On the culinary conventions around celebration

Apologies for the delay in posting; after getting over my last big dissertation deadline this week, I’m hoping I’ll finally get back to my regular posting schedule! Stay tuned here every Friday going forward, with much more robust content to come…

As I’ve been closing out my dissertation process over the last month, people have been asking me how I plan to celebrate. Various guesses include pleasure cruises (hah), trips to a spa (possible) or meditative retreat (less likely), and of course, countless bottles of champagne and rounds of martinis (desirable, but somewhat unsustainable). I was hearing those guesses at the back of my mind as we boarded our return flight from Puerto Rico, a short celebration of my birthday and the diss defense, and as close as I’ll likely ever get to a true resort experience.

As the flight attendants made their way down the aisle hawking for-sale snacks and beverages, two women behind us handed over their credit cards and their order: two Tito’s, and two red wines, plus bags of candy and chips. An hour later they reupped those orders, and again an hour later. “We’re staying in vacation mode,” they told the flight attendant as they ordered each round. Though I was nervous that the journey’s vibe would soon shift to that of a typical Red Sox game, I was touched by the impulse to stay in “vacation mode,” to keep celebrating and staying in a joyful mentality as long as the plane remained in the air.  

For many cultures around the world, alcohol is a prerequisite to celebration, a sociocultural association that has much to do with differentiating from everyday life as it does actual enjoyment of the thing itself. We pop bottles of champagne because its effervescence sets it apart from other wine and spirits, and unlike its fizzy cousins, beer and ciders, champagne was associated originally with the wealthy nobility of France. Toasting originated as a ritualistic practice in ancient Greece, then was eventually inscribed into the Roman Senate’s practice of toasting the Emperor Augustus at every meal. The concept of the booze-heavy “happy hour” came with the formalization of the industrial workday, but also from the incorporation of drinking habits into the post-Prohibition American consciousness. The phrase “It’s five o’clock somewhere,” came from the comedian Red Skelton, who routinely riffed on drinking to reframe the trauma he experienced following his father’s death from alcoholism.

Yet I think about the impulse to imbibe less as a must-have accompaniment to a joyous occasion, and more as a natural response to want to eat or drink something special to showcase the specialness of the day. While I could make (or order) French toast or coffee cake pretty much any time, doing so on Mother’s Day forces me to attend to the experience of tasting more deliberately than I would otherwise. A glass of champagne doesn’t taste any better than my favorite cocktail, but it does make feel as though I must share the occasion (and the bottle) with others. Foods became laden with meaning not only because they have an inherent physiological or emotional impact, but because they shift our mindset into a more intentional space. As the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu observed, the taste of a luxurious food or drink, something outside the realm of our everyday necessities, causes us to conflate the taste of luxury with the taste of freedom. We then form lasting associations between the foods of the special moment and the specialness of the moment itself; its experience becomes, as Bourdieu says, “amor fati,” converted from optional into necessity.

Though I didn’t pop any bubbly this week, I fully intend to do so at some point soon. But if there’s anything the last seven years of research have taught me, it’s that the social production of how I feel about food has made it impossible for me to accept any given food stuff as a prerequisite to experience. Whether’s it’s champagne, a slice of cake, or just a warm cup of tea, I’m putting the celebration first, and the comestible second.

Recommended Reading: On the subject of alcohol, I’ve been loving (albeit it with a bit of FOMO) the amazing martinis in NYC roundup in the New Yorker, crafted by one of my favorite fiction writers, Gary Shteyngart. I only wish I’d been dragooned to help with the research and taste-testing. (Boston-based editors, HMU if you’re hoping for a similar local survey.) Give the piece—and the hilarious accompanying video—a look.

The Perfect Bite: I did take myself for one celebratory bite this week—a small cup of my favorite single-size pastry, cheesecake with raspberries at Tatte—and it was so, so worth it. I rarely turn down a cheesecake of any kind, but we loved these so much we ordered a bunch at our wedding ten years ago (a spread of all our favorite pastries across Boston and New York, including Steve’s Key Lime Pie and chocolate orgasms from the long-lost Rosie’s). So nostalgia + individual size + self-indulgence = perfection.

Cooked & Consumed: My daughter has a strong affection for what she calls “spicy rice”—aka Indian food—but limits her sampling to a few key dishes, malai kofta, saag paneer (aka “squeaky cheese with greens”), and vegetable samosas. This week I finally got a homemade version into her repertoire, making a basic chana masala but with a little kick from Burlap & Barrel’s super delicious and aromatic vindaloo masala. I cooked up some onion, ginger, and garlic in vegetable oil, then added in a generous spoonful of the masala spice and a few cubes of frozen tomato sauce, along with a chopped handful of slightly wrinkled cherry tomatoes. Once the tomatoes had given up most of their juice, I added a can of coconut milk, a can of drained chickpeas, and a spoonful or two of heavy cream to neutralize the most intensely spicy notes, then seasoned with salt just before serving over steamed rice. My daughter’s eyes went wide upon tasting —“oooh, spicy,” was her first response, and I assumed it would go uneaten—but then after a generous spoonful of yogurt, she proceeded to lick her bowl clean. Another win in the parental cooking book…