The dinner party economy

you're invited

Recently I found a treasure at the dump. As my regular volunteer gig, I rescue salvageable collectables, art supplies and tools at the local waste transfer station for the non-profit thrift store Reclaim It. I literally get to dig through the trash looking for treasure. And this week, I found something extremely cool and specifically tailored to my interests.

Several recipe booklets written by James Beard and his contemporaries — many of them signed! This is very rad for obvious reasons, but it also got me thinking. Four of the books are workbooks for dinner party classes created by The Good Cooking School, a group of chefs that included James Beard and Jacque Pepin among others. They felt like a perfect little gift because I have been thinking lately about the lost art of the dinner party.

My parents had a rich social life while I was growing up and when I was a kid, I would frequently spend my evenings watching TV upstairs while my parents partied downstairs. The background music of these nights was a blend of laughter, wine-fueled chatter and actual music, usually jazz or Frank Sinatra. As a child, I couldn’t fathom what adults found so entertaining about sitting around and just talking, but as I got older I started to find it all rather glamorous. The dinner party became the backbone of my concept of adulthood.

Now in my thirties, I don’t find myself going to or hosting dinner parties all that often. The thing about dinner parties is that they take a lot of work. Those laughter-filled evenings of my parents’ were bracketed by hours of frantically tidying, table setting, cooking and cleaning up afterwards. Instead, we have potlucks. I love a good potluck, don’t get me wrong. At its best, a potluck is an act of collective care and a celebration of spontaneity. Sometimes everything comes together in perfect nutritional balance and culinary harmony, and sometimes you are putting chocolate rice putting on your taco salad because it looked like beans. A potluck is community, of course. But on the other hand, if we are constantly asking each other to provide a dish for the collective meal, when do we get the opportunity to really take care of each other, and in return be taken care of?

Recently I was spending a weekend visiting an old friend and on the first night in his home, we hung out in the kitchen while he cooked us dinner. “Put me to work,” I said, “I love to cook.” But he waved me off. I spent the evening sitting back, drinking wine and catching up with him while he confidently and competently cooked chicken and pasta and never asked me to even chop one vegetable. I was so used to the idea that we must all contribute to the meal always that this felt like such a luxury, and I sank into that feeling like a warm bath. To not be asked to do anything, to let go of control and just be fed. “You traveled so far to be here, I really appreciate it,” he said. Sometimes we need to take care of other people, and reward them simply for the presence of their company. I think we are starving for that.

As my parents have gotten older, they’ve hosted fewer dinner parties, because they don’t have as many friends who are willing to host them. It’s exhausting to put that energy out there and not get it back. My dad told me this years ago and the way I’ve seen it manifest in my own social life has made me sad ever since. Yes, dinner parties are a lot of work but they are also a kind of magic. What a privilege to have someone plan an entire evening for you. To curate the food, the friends, the vibe.

Dinner parties are community too, but in order for them to work, they need to be part of a larger community, an economy really - a dinner party economy. While I was in the middle of writing this, my copy of Robin Wall-Kimmerer’s new book The Serviceberry arrived in the mail. I’d forgotten that I’d preordered it, so the package felt like a gift from my past self. That feeling turned out to be apt, as the book is a reflection on the value of the gift economy. Taking inspiration from the natural world and Indigenous wisdom, she challenges the idea that our economy needs to be based on scarcity and individualism:

The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity. A gift economy nurtures the community bonds that enhance mutual well-being; the economic unit is “we” rather than “I,” as all flourishing is mutual.

Gift giving is often looked down upon in our society for being shallow. If you admit to it as one of your “love languages” it’s often with a hint of shame. But that is only because we are trapped in a society that tells us that gifts are always things that can be reduced to a price.

I lament my own immersion in an economy that grinds what is beautiful and unique into dollars, converts gifts to commodities in a currency that enables us to purchase things we don’t really need while destroying what we do.

Whether a gift is an object or a meal or an act, it’s not really about the thing, it’s about the relationship. It’s a statement of “I see you, I care about you and I want to care for you.” If we give without expectation of directly receiving anything in return, how much more we ultimately gain by the bonds that act of generosity creates. A dinner party economy is just a more specific form of a gift economy. I want to cook a meal for my friends, and light candles, and play Ram and not ask that they bring anything, but know that my generosity will find its way back to me somehow.

Today, of course, is Thanksgiving, the dinner party holiday. It’s the one day a year when we are all guaranteed to come together around the table and share a meal. That’s the whole thing. That and expressing gratitude for the gifts we’ve been given. In theory, I’m all in favor — I love the idea of a harvest feast celebrating gratefulness and I appreciate the weird synchronicity of millions of people eating the same meal. But of course it’s so fraught. Familial tensions run high (now more than ever), the meal could be improved (but no one can agree how), and the history of the holiday is gross (to say the actual least). I don’t have a solution to the problem that is Thanksgiving, but maybe we wouldn’t feel the need to continue to cling to this holiday if we found ways to take the best parts of it and integrate them into the rest of our year.

This brings me back to the dinner party class workbooks. Each one contains an introduction to the cuisine, a menu that includes drinks and dessert, a shopping list and detailed cooking instructions. The whole experience is considered, not just the meal. I loved imagining the person who opened this book, who diligently took notes and followed instructions, all to throw a party for their friends. I want to live in their world. So, I’ll make it.

I want to throw a series of dinner parties based on these booklets. Or rather, I want to throw one party and be invited to three. If you’re interested in joining me on this little project, let me know. Maybe we can’t dismantle capitalism and replace it with a gift economy over night, but we can have each other over to dinner.

Stray thoughts…

A particularly thrilling thing for me to see in The Serviceberry was the following section — me and Robin Wall-Kimmerer are on the same wavelength, y’all!

The words “ecology” and “economy” come from the same root, the Greek oikos, meaning “home” or “household”: i.e., the system of relationship, the goods and services that keep us alive. The system of market economies that we’re given as a default is hardly the only model out there.

Another gratifying thing that happened this week was that Wintering re-entered the Sunday Times bestseller list. Katherine May made a very charming video expressing thanks as well as bafflement since she had done absolutely no work to make that happen. It’s all thanks to this newsletter! Just kiddiiiiing, but there is something cool about being tapped into a thing that a lot of people are feeling. I liked imaging other people recommending the book to friends, knowing that it’s the sort of tool we need right now.

For more thoughts on entertaining as an art form, and so, so much more beyond the scope of today’s newsletter, I really enjoyed the new Martha Stewart documentary on Netflix.

I’ve noticed myself having the hardest time taking pictures for the newsletter, so solidly has phone reprogrammed my brain into only knowing how to take vertical photos. I know it’s not an inherently better way to photograph — I remember struggling with this in the other direction when I first started to use phone and social media as my main way to take and share photos. It’s just creepy how much of an effect it has.