A Letter to the Dinner Guests of 2015

December 23, 2015

I didn't post many recipes this year. In fact, I hardly posted any at all.

Instead, I used them.

I hosted more dinner parties, brunches, and cocktail parties this year than I care to admit —  mainly because it’s hard to remember them all.

But that’s not what matters.

Looking back on 2015, it was my most favorite year yet.

And it wasn’t because I began a new job that gave my career a greater sense of purpose; or the long-awaited addition of a new furry roommate named Bo; or the fact that I fell in love a little bit more every day with New York in spite of it all; or the fact that I’ve finally accepted that whatever happens, will happen, and that it will all work out.

No, it wasn’t any of these things.

What mattered most this year happened in the quiet moments.

Quiet moments like leaving the office and walking home in the late fall air and plotting menu ideas and recipes, while I could see bartenders through restaurant windows, shaking cocktails behind candlelit bars.

Quiet moments like when I would wash what few dishes I have in my apartment’s tiny kitchen and I could hear my friends laughing from the other room  —  listening to music while talking about their jobs, dating, and everything in between.

What mattered most was knowing that I had people in my life with whom I could laugh too loudly with, and often too late with on a Sunday night around a tiny bistro table over dinner at “FK”  —  how my friends have come to dub Fieldhouse Kitchen, where “you can leave your troubles at the doorstep.”*

*A doorstep at the top of a fifth-floor walk-up, mind you.

This year was a year of transition, acceptance, spontaneity, but most of all  —  like every year  —  it was about love.

And finally, to anyone who has sat around a table with me in 2015 and enjoyed drinks and a meal, know that you have made my year.

To those who enjoyed Adele’s “Hello” a bit too much, danced until they fell off furniture (thanks, IKEA), taken down curtains, ‘Tindered’ until they ran out of 100-mile prospects, brought their own chair to the party, or just showed up looking for a good time  —  I hope you had one, because I did!

Here’s to another great year at ‘FK’ in 2016.

And as always, the door’s always open. BYOB. Because you all drink like fishes.