Days 197-203 - NY, NY - Week 5 - Four of a kind

I like symmetry of events in my life, so I'm always on the lookout for it. And this week didn't disappoint me.

It started with a friendly game of poker at Sasha's. Although my hands sucked beyond any belief, it was still highly enjoyable just for the improbability of it all: one deck of cards (a new one, mind you!) kept giving us the most unlikely and seemingly statistically impossible combinations -four aces on the flop, four jacks on the flop, four aces on the flop again.

Coincidence? I think, not. Sure enough, four memorable events followed, four of the amazingly warm and fuzzy kind...

Food Club

Some time last year we made an attempt to periodically get together for our own Book Club. That was a complete flop. We just couldn't select any enjoyable book, and no quality discussion - especially polemic - is possible when everybody hates what they read. The gatherings were still nice though. Why? Because awesome food was served at all of them. The choice was obvious. Ditch the book discussion and just focus on what we do best, eating!

Ever since then, approximately once a month, we go to different ethnic restaurants - Mexican, Korean, Persian, Indian, Senegalese, Jewish, you name it - to sample their food selection and general ambiance. This endeavor is an absolute success. Ironically, we do discuss books (sometimes).

Manhattan through the eyes of a tourist

Javier arrived on Wednesday. Sure enough, his bags didn't. I start to notice a pattern here: almost every time somebody comes to visit me (be in Cozumel or Manhattan), something happens to their luggage. Oh well. This time though it was funny: literally, half of the plane didn't find their bags on arrival. Seriously, how is this possible that a couple of hundred suitcases get forgotten!

I love it when friends come to visit Manhattan. It is such a rewarding experience to show them around. It is so easy to impress anybody with Manhattan. You don't have to overexert your brain trying to figure out the next entertainment: just leave the house, turn the corner and discover where the day takes you. So far, the past several days took us to the obligatory touristic Fifth Avenue, Times Square, Central Park, Grand Central and totally un-touristic LES (Lower East Side) with its cozy community parks and yummy restaurants. "Fancy Delancy" bagel sandwich at Russ & Daughters (featuring smoked tuna and wasabi marinated fish roe!) was the definition of deliciousness. Also, Dima and I were totally impressed that Javier liked Holland herring, something that non-Russian / non-Scandinavian / non-Dutch people usually get utterly disgusted by. In their defense, I can see how taking a smelly salty herring by the tail, dress it with cubed raw onions on all sides and sticking it whole in your mouth can be an acquired taste...

Our LES walk reminded me of Tanya's birthday last year, when we decided to celebrate it in style by creating our own Manhattan Treasure Hunt. We had so much fun! Although I almost got killed for "confusing wording" of some clues by the over-competitive participants (obviously, "confusing wording" was part of the clues, duh). The race was organized in 3 parts: everybody was supposed to meet at a different bar after each leg. We (the organizers - Tanya, Michael and I) thought that the bars would be the main attraction of this event and the hunt would be just a nice background to drinking. Little did we know about the winning spirit of our friends! Regardless of the imminent danger I endured throughout the night, this birthday was a super successful operation, and our Treasure Hunt script has been used as a guide to the Lower East Side by some of my out-of-town friends visiting Manhattan!

Memento dinner disaster

No, don't get me wrong, the food was delicious. Five pounds of scalloped potatoes, along with three pounds of green been tomato salad and twelve BBQ shredded beef sandwiches were devoured by 8 people in approximately 15 minutes. It was a more personal disaster for me. You see, I pride myself on always cooking a new main dish for my dinner parties. And so far I had been successful in keeping up with this self-imposed objective. Until this past Friday...

I decided on the menu on Monday, the main dish being BBQ shredded beef sandwiches. I picked this one because it involved slow-cooking, brewed coffee and liquid smoke. I remembered wanting to cook this dish before, fascinated by the coffee + liquid smoke combination. But somehow I failed to remember that I, in fact, already HAD cooked it before! Like a total idiot, I was rambling on and on to my friends about my excitement for manipulating the liquid smoke on a skillet. My friends are supportive and polite (apparently), so they patiently tolerated my ranting and happily joined me in my excitement. Of course, later it turned out that they had been surprised by such an overwhelming reaction to this repeat recipe on my part, and that their excitement had stemmed from the fact that they were looking forward to something they had sampled and liked before...

Now the best part. The total cooking time of this dish is 12 hours: 10 of them are actual cooking and 2 are dedicated to pre-paration and post-paration (this word should totally be included in the Webster's!). All this time I continued to be excited and slightly nervous (as usual) about the outcome. None of the steps had tipped me off. Sadly, even having a bottle of liquid smoke was not a good enough clue of having cooked this before (although I did get surprised for a second that I already had it).

The Memento moment finally dawned on me when everything was ready and I was pouring the remaining BBQ sauce from the skillet into a little bowl to put on the table. "Oh crap!", I thought, "This seems so familiar..." My heart sank, and in a split second I saw last BBQ shredded beef sandwiches dinner in backward fast motion: my guests at the table in front of the meal praising the deliciousness of my BBQ dinner, Dima shredding the cooked meat while I pour the sauce into the exact same bowl, adding the liquid smoke to the skillet, brewing coffee for the sauce, putting meat in the slow-cooker, and finally ordering a 5-pound chuck roast at the Amish Market. What? Wow! Or as Tanya would say in Russian, "nda..."

The Office

Ironically, I met with my office friends in Scranton, "The Office" location. I have always been so fortunate with being surrounded by awesome people. The only reason why I stayed motivated and relatively sane at Strategic Insight for almost 12 years of my tenure is our team. We were always extremely efficient and continuously delivered high quality results not because we cared about our jobs per se, but because we cared about each other. I remember at one management seminars they told us an educational story about Southwest Airlines. Apparently, this airline was one of the very few that didn't completely collapse after September 11. When approached for advice on how they had managed to do it, the CEO or COO of the company said, "It's really very simple. We make sure our employees are happy at all times. Because happy people do good work." It has been our team's motto for years. Thank God!