Feta for the masses

I'm just recently back from New York. Every Martin Luther King Day weekend, I make the trip to the Golden Festival. This is a multi-day music and dance extravaganza. Saturday night is the big night-- three venues with bands ranging from a capella Georgian singers to the What Cheer Band-- a scramble/marching/stageshow unexplainable group of musicians.

I've been attending this festival when it was in a dance studio above a bar in Soho. Now, it is held in a school in the very northern corner of Manhattan. It has gotten so popular that tickets are sold in advance, and, at times, people have to wait at the door until someone leaves so another person can attend. More than 1,000 come to the festival.

My participation, besides being a fan, is to participate in food preparation. A group of volunteers work in what can barely be described as a kitchen. It does have a sink, but other than that, it's long tables where we work on food prep.

My first, and most important job, is making the beet salad. I start with Macedonian marinated beets-- about 10 very large jars-- and I start slicing them. The way I do this is dump them in a large tub and attack them with knives. Next comes the walnuts and red onion, followed by some fresh lemon juice, olive oil and fresh dill I had minced finely. Last, I throw in feta and work it through with my hands. Every year it comes out a little different, but every year it is good. Some day,I'll make it at home; I just somehow never remember to. It's easy, not that expensive and a wonderful way to eat beets.

We also have a lot of other food-- ajvar (a red pepper spread), hummus, baba ganoush, tsatsiki and taromsalata for dips. To go with the dips we have pita, raw vegetables and chunks of good bread. We also have grape leaves, several kinds of cheeses, a variety of beef and pork sausage, and a hot white bean dish we reheat in crock pots. We have marinated vegetables and several kinds of olives. Sweets consist of nuts, dried fruit, lots of chocolate and a Greek breadlike cake. The food is supposed to be a "snack" but since the event starts at 6 pm, many look at it as dinner. The line starts queueing up as soon as we start to bring out the trays to put on long tables.
There is also beer at the festival. Kegs and kegs of Brooklyn Lager. We ran out around midnight. Considering the festival goes until 4 am, that's pretty early. I suppose the volunteer committee that runs the festival will decide what to do for next year.

While the festival is wonderful, perhaps the highlight for me is brunch the next day at Emerson's house in Brooklyn, where Jerry and I stay. It is a real chance to visit with people. Brunch starts around 1 pm and lasts until after midnight. We sit around eat, drink, talk and eat some more. This year I made bread and brought peppermint bark. Emerson always cooks a turkey and a ham. We had breads, cheeses, sausage, sweets, wine, and a variety of other food and drink. We sit around Emerson's dining room table. There were nine of us staying at Emerson's this year, down from last year's record 20-some people. I'm not sure how many people came over to Emerson's this year for brunch, though I do know three people who came to brunch stayed so late they spent the night.

The festival, the dancing, the sitting around talking and eating, remind me what friendship is really about. These are people whom I have known for a long time-- some close to 40 years, and it seems wherever I move to, I gravitate back to this group. It's good to know that no matter where I travel, I always have a place I can call home.