Steaksgiving

The first time I cooked a steak for Thanksgiving was in my senior year of college. Before college, my family had the same tradition every year. We would go to my Uncle Bill and Auntie Loretta’s house in the East Bay. My mom would bring a pecan pie after testing out new recipes on my dad and me for the month of October. We would watch football and eat like all the tropes of a typical Thanksgiving.

Going to school across the country, I wasn’t able to go home for that short a span of time. By my senior year, I wanted to have a Thanksgiving meal, but I wanted to take it back to basics. Thanksgiving is a time to pig out on the foods you loved. And I realized something-I hated turkey. It needs gravy to make it good, it takes all day to make, and it comes from a really ugly bird. So I went to the store and bought myself a big fucking steak. I looked up a good recipe on how to make it without a grill, and I made it.

As I was finishing that monster in front of the football game, my friend Chris texted me to see if I was in town. Similarly dispassionate about turkey, he was making fajitas at his dorm and wanted to see if I was up for some. I went over and we had tequila and fajitas. We talked about New York and depression.

By next Thanksgiving, my dad had passed away and I was living at home. I thought I would be able to partially resume my family’s old tradition, but my uncle was going out of town that year, so I drove down to a friend’s for Asian Thanksgiving. Turkey. Giant pears. You know.

I didn’t have my second Thanksgiving steak until the following year in my shitty East Village studio. I bought myself a bottle of red wine, another big steak, and I watched Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations while making and eating it. A tradition was born.

The tradition really solidified (and regurgitated) the following year. I decided to make a day of Steaksgiving in my Astoria apartment. All my roommates were with their families. They had invited me to join them, but I still felt very emotional when around families for holidays, so I declined. I bought myself brie, bread, a bottle of white and a bottle of red. I watched Anthony Bourdain while noshing on cheese the whole afternoon, and then as night fell, I prepared my steak with potatoes and Swiss chard.

As I put on my tenth episode and finished the second bottle of wine, I started to cry from joy and drunkenness. I was really proud of myself for coming up with a coping mechanism for this family holiday. I felt truly happy, I was strong enough to be alone on Thanksgiving. It felt like a blessing.

I puked in a trash can four subway stops ahead of my job the next day.

In the years that have followed, I’ve made steaks on Thanksgiving day or the day before. I’ve picked out a butcher, gone to nice wine shops to make sure I have everything I responsibly want for the day.

Maybe three or four years ago, my roommates wanted to join me, and they asked if our other friends could come as well. I agreed, but I told everyone to bring their own steaks, and I would cook them with my patented recipe. At least ten people came with a steak, and I had to man the stove with precise timing for about an hour. Anthony Bourdain wasn’t on the TV, but I felt like one of the line cooks he lionizes. One of my frying pans melted from the oven heat (it had a rubber handle). When everything was cooked, I took a glass of wine and saw all of my friends before me.

This was a holiday I had clung to and transformed for myself when I felt terribly alone. Now I was surrounded by friends. These were people who couldn’t make it home for the holiday, or they came from countries that didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. I gave a toast telling them some version of this story, maybe with a subway puke story or two removed, and it felt very warm and old-fashioned. I’ve cooked steaks for friends each Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving eve since.

This Thanksgiving, I don’t really have a kitchen to use. I’ll be on my own again, and I feel I could be lonely during it. You don’t get better and more put-together every year, it comes and goes. But I’ve felt this sort of loneliness before, and I’ll find steak again.

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