Tipple Sheet | all things booze and cocktails
When I was a little girl. living in Brooklyn, and it was a perfect, warm day, or we were watching something beautiful, like a scarlet sunset over the city skyline, my mother would say to me, “Close your eyes, breathe it in, and hold this moment in your mind, so you may remember it with all your senses.” This is a short story about an evening I would hold in my memory as my mother taught me, and the impetus of my love of food.
As a single woman in my early 20s, I had been invited to a dinner party by a guy whose date invitations I had rejected for some time. He seemed very intelligent and perfectly nice, which I suppose is why I hadn’t gone out with him, as I tended to lean toward the brooding artist type. But I felt sorry for him when he told me none of his friends could make it for his birthday that evening. Could I possibly join him, his parents, and a family friend for dinner?
His parent’s apartment was high up in a handsome pre-war building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with gorgeous views of the city. It was a reader’s oasis. Well-worn furniture in dark wood, fabric upholstered chairs one could cradle in with a cat (they had two) on their lap for hours, and books everywhere the eye could see. Even the dining room had bookshelves, with thick histories and paperback mysteries tucked in among many cookbooks.
Tipple Sheet | all things booze and cocktails