A benefit for The Kitchen; some other stuff. (Including these two handsome dudes who “write essays about living a meaningful life with less stuff,” which, LOL. I mean, “God bless.” Today’s events here; subscribe to this podcast in iTunes here.

by Choire Sicha and Ken Layne

Choire: Hello, I have some questions, at this time of “holidays” and “family” and “everyone in Brooklyn having a second and sometimes even third child, also often having two at the same time, because IVF” (I almost typed IDF, because of the news!) and I guess my main question is: how do people talk themselves into having children when the world, at least as we know it, is going to likely end during the lifetime of these children?

Ken: So you’re considering having a child. Congratulations! Brooklyn is certainly a wonderful environment for children.

Choire: It is true that once every five years I think “HA, I SHOULD GET A BABY.” It passes by the time dessert comes around.

Ken: That’s how it often starts, I’ve heard. “Hmm that looks fun, having a baby.” I’ve never experienced this myself, so I did actually have to talk myself into becoming a parent.

Choire: So you admit you knew it was a terrible idea.

Ken: I am not a huge fan of “people,” of any size.

Choire: Oh that’s an excellent point. And yet. You made some.

Ken: Still, right, people do tend to reproduce. What are we at now, 7 billion? That’s way too many people. I fully support birth control, legal abortion, the one-child policy, the no-child policy and periodic biological events like the Black Death. Yet I wound up married to someone who wanted kids, and I thought it over and selfishly decided it was not a terrible idea, for us. I considered it a deliberate engagement with humanity, for good or ill. And, eight years ago, one of these babies appeared, followed by another a couple of years later. An interesting thing to consider is that once they arrive, they tend to stay. So that’s worth consideration.

Choire: That’s one secondary thing that’s terrifying about children, their semi-permanence. So: “children: not a terrible idea” and also “engaging with humanity.” Like playdates and Lamaze classes?

Ken: Eh, not so much. A lot of my longtime friends had kids around the same time — it’s that whole despicable group-tribe thing that leads to “oh everybody’s got a Prius now” — so this spared me from having to go to strangers’ houses and hear them talk or whatever. Anyway, kids should play outside, by themselves. Or at a park, where the parent can sit on a bench and look at an iPad.

Choire: I do feel sometimes that we will drown under the weight of all your children. That all these children will take us responsible, childless people down with the whole planet. Also, I was going to say “we’re not on a generation ship, speeding through the stars, perpetuating life until we arrive at our destination,” but that would be totally untrue. That is EXACTLY what we are doing, I guess.

Ken: Yes, that’s what we’re doing, whether we consider it or not. We’re on a generational ship, or train, or rag-tag caravan of interstellar freighters. In the past, people had kids because a) that’s what happened, mysteriously, whenever men and women had sex, and b) you needed labor for your sharecropper farm on the Lord’s Manor.

Choire: Right. Also “the birth control” that happened is a thing.

Ken: There are parts of the world where “free farm labor” is still a draw, like those sad onion farms in rural India where the parents kill themselves because they’re in debt to Monsanto for a bag of seeds … god it’s all so awful. But in the modern western world, it’s a choice that adults make and a mistake that teenagers make.

Choire: I am not sure that they are not thinking this way a bit as well in Brooklyn and Los Feliz. But mostly that intended child labor has become “supporting us when we are old and even lazier.”

Ken: So your neighbors in Brooklyn, why are they having kids? Are they making little homunculi, making a legacy, acquiring an accessory? Especially after election years like this one, I do feel a demographic tug. Just because all the kids like hip hop and sexting today does NOT mean they’re going to be intelligent liberal-arts science proponents with a shot at saving the world and colonizing space and all that, right? Look at Kid Rock, he loves the hip hop and he’s a terrible old wingnut. Or Marco Rubio! He could teach a Learning Annex class on hip hop, and he’s a teabagger. So some social engineering is necessary.

Choire: Oh exactly! “Cultural markers” will be so different in a decade. Well… I think there’s a multiplicity of reasons for people having children, EVEN in Brooklyn. I don’t want to be cruel about all my child-having friends. Even though I think they KNOW they made a mistake and their children will be living in Waterworld.

Ken: But! We can deal intelligently with climate change, if this idiot political denial season has truly and finally come to an end. Even if the worst case sea-rise projections come true and we’ve got 10% less land mass in a hundred years, that’s not Waterworld. California is zooming along toward 50% renewables, the superstorms are even making the non-crazy Republicans say we’ve got to rapidly change energy consumption, and to me it seems clear that a group of people in our age range are the ones pushing all this stuff into hyperdrive right now. It’s entirely plausible that today’s kid who learns composting in preschool will treat the environment with the same bred-into-the-brain respect that Americans used to have for … I don’t know, killing communists. I also want to send our kids to space, so their parents can have sex again. No, I mean, so that we can travel the stars and have crazy space colonies and meet the Aliens.

Choire: I mean that’s… a reasonable goal. But I have to suggest that, along the way, there is going to be a Great Culling of either the generation that you are raising or of their children. Studies [that I made up] suggest that as much as 99.2% of people being born now will die horribly. Eaten by whales, that kind of thing. Have you begun to prepare your children for Global Survivor?

Ken: They are learning how to garden and how to cook, and they are forced to go outside and fight snakes and climb Joshua trees and not walk into traffic, but that’s the limit to the survivor training. I figure they can look up all this insane stuff on the Internet when they’re 10, like I did when I was a kid.

Choire: So, Ken, you believe that people who have children are better, more noble, than those who do not, is that correct?

Ken: Yes, yes I do.

Choire: That is what I have always expected.

Ken: No, not really! The Modern Parent is usually a selfish, insufferable jerk. But there’s something interesting in the way everybody — in our insulated world of media-tech new urbanism locavore lifestyle — is getting gay married and having kids and putting together farmers markets.

Choire: I do agree maybe, that those who are not raising children are sucking metals from the earth, and food from labor, and not bringing anything to the future beyond our great works of art and science, which no one in the future will be able to understand, when they are all speaking their pidgin like Tom Hanks in that movie.

Ken: Well, we don’t lack for people, we don’t lack for teeming masses.

Choire: That’s who makes my shoes!!!

Ken: You can make a philosophical argument for trying to raise up some kids to do some good for the world, if they don’t turn out to be psychopaths. And then there’s the wholly personal reasons, the wanting to be part of a blood-relation community, the semi-belief that there is good in that, even when you’re wondering about the legality of selling your kids on eBay.

Choire: It’s not legal, is that correct?

Ken: Still researching! Maybe in Belize? I do like my kids. It’s fun to have people around who are at basically my level of maturity, and when they’re not being annoying they can be incredibly entertaining. There is the biological component, so you’re probably going to love them because they are partly you, but it’s a real benefit to also like them. And the best way to like them is make sure you don’t spend ALL DAY EVERY DAY with them, jesus ….

Choire: Well also as I understand it from reading literature, like How Stella Got Her Groove Back, there is some “biological imperative” that most people seem to have, and that seems like a persuasive argument in that second camp there?

Ken: Ultimately, I want my friends and comrades to raise kids. I don’t want to spend the last years of my life in some hellish rest home run by gruesome halfwits with tattoos on their heads.

Choire: That is perhaps the best and/or only reason of all: that we are in something of a breeding race. Against Mitt Romney. Who has gotten the jump on us.

Ken: I want to die with some hope that it’s going to get better, that there’s a point to civilization and the slow progress we make as a species, that it goes somewhere other than “giant slobs rummaging in the radioactive slush for cyborg rats to eat.”

Choire: It’s possible you will.

Ken: And, lacking any belief in God or even Aliens, having kids is a kind of gamble that there is a future. Either that, or my condom broke, I don’t remember.

Choire: Which is the opposite of having cats, really. The only thing you get from cats is that “everyone dies alone.” These are persuasive arguments you have put forward! Perhaps I will Google “impregnation” and sally forth this weekend.

Ken: It’s still possible that you could buy a kid on eBay in time for Thanksgiving dinner!

Photo by TrentTSD.

“Tofurkey is offensive, linguistically and culturally. If you want to eat turkey, eat turkey. Tofu doesn’t look or taste or smell like turkey at all. If you make tofu, own it and treat it like tofu and call it tofu.”
 — Dr. James Hamblin, the Atlantic’s health editor, answers all your Thanksgiving health questions about turkey skin, calories and taking a bowl of gravy and a pack of cigarettes to your childhood bedroom.

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. “Because Jesus cares less than you think he does!”

Dear Polly,

I recently started my dream job, at a growing startup, with a bunch of friends I really like and who inspire me. The company is growing quickly so I’ve been on the lookout for possible fellow travelers who are cool and organized and would fit in well with my team. My best friend recently recommended a young man for the team and told me in setting up the meeting, “You”ll love him!” Which, it turns out, I do.

The company is going through some planned chaos right now, so the position I considered him for may not materialize for a few more months. In the meantime, we’ve become friends. We like a lot of the same music and art, and we’ve gone out together several times now, sometimes with others, sometimes just us. Pretty much the whole time I’m trying not to be distracted by the huge crush I have on him. I get the feeling he digs me, too. Normally I’m the sort of person who would happily make the first move, but since he came to me in the context of seeking a job, I’m reluctant. I don’t want to be inappropriate! He still needs and wants a job, but all I can think about is whether or not he wants to make out with me.

Am I being overly cautious? Or prudently reluctant? Please keep in mind when answering that I’m the type of person capable of infusing workaday situations with drama, especially in the absence of any actual drama. And that my life is going really well right now.

Overthinking It

Dear Overthinking It,

When I was young and my life was going really well, I always made the first move. I thought it passive and retro to wait. But I look back now and think that was stupid. I rarely gave anyone a chance to win me over. And sometimes after I started seeing someone, I wasn’t sure if we were together because I happened to be semi-attractive and entertaining and I forced the issue, or because that guy really liked me. I’m not sure the guy in question always knew either.

I look back now and see myself as one of those cheery girls handing out free samples of brownies and cookies at the mall. Of course you’re going to eat that exotic chunk of brownie that’s shoved in your face unexpectedly. Does that mean you really love macadamia nuts? Are you even hungry, or are you just mildly bored?

In your case, making the first move isn’t only inappropriate, but it could create a real mess for you down the line. He might seem to like you partially because he wants you to hire him. Do you want to start something with someone who could be lukewarm, or who could end up saying, “Don’t get freaked out or anything, but I hope this sleeping together thing doesn’t affect my chances, because, dude, I really need a job”?

You’re already spending time together. Eventually he’ll say something about his feelings or he won’t. If he wants the job more than he wants you, well, that’s instructive, isn’t it? He can either be swept away by his feelings for you, or he can take the safe course and therefore be safely avoided.

Many of us, when we’re young, end up following some bored, ambivalent person around the mall for hours, just because he or she deigned to eat one lousy brownie nugget. We could all benefit from a little more patience and a little more self-restraint, if only in the interest of self-preservation.

Polly

Dear Polly,

I’m 29 years old, and my wife and I have been married for two years, but we’ve been together for over a decade. For four years we did the long-distance thing, and then when she finished her medical education this past spring, we were both excited about finally living together again. Unfortunately, med students don’t just get to pick where they do their residency, and my wife ended up in Hartford, Conn., while I was still living in NYC.

The program in Hartford is the perfect environment for my wife, and she’s absolutely thrived there. I couldn’t do a long-distance relationship anymore, though — it was harder being in New York and knowing that my wife was two hours away than having her across an ocean. I quit my job in NYC, dumped the second apartment there that we were paying for, and moved in with my wife for the first time in ages. I love living with her, but transitioning to life in Hartford hasn’t been easy.

I know that plenty of people live in places less exciting than Hartford, but all of my friends (and some of my family) still live in NYC, along with the activities I used to love. Hartford has fewer than 200,000 residents, and on the nights and weekends the downtown area where we live completely empties out. I haven’t had a car since high school, and now I’m already planning which one to buy once I find a new job because the public transportation isn’t well developed.

Do you have any advice on how to roll with the punches during a major life change? It’s not just the slower pace, it’s having to transition to a new industry and taking a sizable pay cut after years of consistent raises/promotions, having to deal with the fact that my wife is constantly exhausted from 12+ hour days at the hospital and will be this way for three and a half more years, having to sit on the couch all weekend because my wife is working and I can’t think of anybody to call.

I’ve noticed that one of the common themes people write in to you with is centered on the desire to make a mark on the world and the feeling that they haven’t accomplished enough. When I was in NYC, I loved my job, I had a good group of friends, and I was generally content most of the time. Most people aren’t destined for greatness, and I was happy with happiness. I’m just not sure I can get that same experience here.

Bored in CT

Dear Bored in CT,

Being forced to move to some random spot you don’t like is definitely one of the major hazards of getting married. Small places, like three-legged dogs and babies with male pattern baldness, can take a little longer to love. I understand why you’d feel the way you do at the moment, considering the myriad glories of NYC, unmatchable elsewhere. Accepting less money and less status, missing your friends, longing for the tasty foods and the hustle and bustle of the big city, slouching around the house in your boxers, waiting for your exhausted wife to come home from her residency? These things are a recipe for depression. I’m actually shocked that the word “depressed” never appears in your letter.

I’m going to take this notable absence of the word “depressed,” add it to the remarkable restraint you’ve shown in not blaming your wife for your circumstances, and conclude that you’re a reasonably healthy human being, one with good boundaries and an overall optimistic outlook on stuff. Congratulations! Personally, at your age, I’d be talking shit about Hartford all day to anyone who’d listen (thereby alienating my few potential friends) and then lashing out at my spouse (and slowly but surely ruining my marriage) all night. If I were in your shoes, my wonderful, lovely future-doctor wife would be fucking that studly chief surgery resident by the end of the year.

So let’s build from these strengths of yours, shall we? Your career might suck for a while, but I’m sure you’ll have a lot more choices once your wife finishes her residency. One thing that’s clear, though, is that you have to get out of your apartment on the weekends, and you have to do stuff with new people. You don’t get a free pass from doing this just because you’re married. You have to go out there and be around new people and join clubs and whatever the fuck. I understand that none of these imaginary strangers seem all that great, there aren’t many fun things to do, plus the bars close down early and whatnot. Most places in the world don’t have bars that are open until 2 a.m., and only people from New York and New Orleans and a few other spots on the globe use this as some kind of rubric for judging a place’s quality. Yet the rest of us have adopted it — “Look how sleepy it is here!” — like we’d prefer for our perfectly nice towns to be overrun with theme bars and nightclubs and strip joints. Should every Bedford Falls become a Pottersville? I think not. What’s all well and good (and, yes, intoxicating and special) for NYC doesn’t really translate elsewhere.

But there are other options. A quick search on “Hartford bloggers” sent me to a blog called Sad City Hartford which is negative enough to suit your tastes, but also lists local bowling parties and other forms of weirdness that might be enjoyable now that you’re truly desperate (but not so depressed that you can’t get out the door). Email that guy who posts there, Hakaan, and offer to buy him lunch and ask him about life in Sad City.

In smaller places, you’ll have to stick your neck out, get a little dorky, show your ass. You’ll have to invite five people you hardly know out to a big tasty dinner at Monte Alban, and you’ll have to drink two strong margaritas (strong “like paint thinner, according to local reports), and you’ll have to be enthusiastic and optimistic and listen when people talk, even though they’re nothing like your friends back in NYC. You have to keep an open mind about these new people. (The paint thinner will help.) After a few weeks, you might even find yourself proclaiming, over dinner, that henceforth, Mondays shall be known as Margarita Mondays, and everyone is invited. “Bring your friends!” you’ll say in a temporary paint-thinner-fueled expansive state that you’ll regret the next morning. But then people will bring their friends, and some of them will be interesting, and slowly but surely you’ll have a life.

At the very moments when life feels the most melancholy and bereft of promise, that’s when you have the greatest opportunity to transform not only the present moment, but to expand your horizons from that point forward. My dad died suddenly of a heart attack when I was 25 years old. To say that I was crushed doesn’t quite do justice to my state. I was flattened, to the ground. I was partially erased. I flew home to North Carolina for two months. After staring at the ceiling and crying for a week, I started to spend half of my day running around the neighborhood where I grew up. I would run, then walk, then run again, covering ten or twelve miles a day, listening to music, crying. Then I spent the second half of the day working on my mom’s yard, which was a wreck. I was devastated but I was also so grateful to be alive. When the wind kicked up and it started to rain, I’d keep running or keep pulling weeds, and sometimes I’d cry. I had no skin. There was no boundary between me and the rest of the world. I could soak the whole world into every cell. I was painfully, exquisitely alive.

That example might feel out of scale here. What you’ve described is dissatisfaction and distaste, not grief — again, you didn’t even use the word ‘depressed.’ But I want to encourage you to recognize the enormity of your current crisis, which actually transcends your stated desire to return to a contented state. Marrying someone and moving away from your friends, family, and the place you love: this is the kind of unsettling shift that makes you question your whole existence. While I do think you need to get out the door and meet new people, I want to encourage you not to retreat into distractions that you merely view as time-killers. Don’t seek out mere contentedness, counting down the hours until your wife gets home from the hospital. This is a rare chance for you to explore your relationship to yourself and the world.

You have to outperform right now, is the point. Not only do you have to make a big, awkward effort to get the ball rolling, and then make social plans even when you don’t feel like it, but you also have to go far beyond the bare minimum. You have to clean the apartment, sign up for a cheap personal trainer at the Y, order a good cookbook and teach yourself to make Indian food, go for a long walk even when the weather is terrible. Take on projects that will give your life a feeling of forward motion. Every bit of patience and hard work and enthusiasm you can conjure in the face of discouragement right now will pay off. This is about you reaching a new level of happiness, and cultivating a new kind of openness and acceptance and gratitude toward the world around you.

In a few years, you may end up somewhere else, but you’ll look back and feel proud of yourself. You’ll remember how you cooked baingan bhartha and painted the living room orange and took up Krav Maga and met some lifelong friends. You’ll remember how inexplicably happy you were in Sad City.

Polly

Spinning your wheels? Need someone pushy to whip you into shape? Write to Polly. Do it right now, motherfucker.

Previously: Ask Polly: I Feel Guilty About How Absurdly Rich I Am

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl’s existential advice columnist. She’s also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by dichohecho.

★★★ The old bleak dazzle again, working with what it could find to work with: finding a smudgy halo behind the head of walking smoker, flaring off the white hair of a man squinting on a cell phone, putting a shine on the seams of the patches in the asphalt. November itself. October had squandered most of its advantages, but its starveling brother was at least putting in the effort. Nevertheless, after dark, there was the crew with the cherry-picker truck wrapping lights around a tree on Broadway, with giant metal snowflakes in the truck bed, hastening to turn the page of the calendar.

A Short Email Chat With The Amazing Performer Christeene

Christeene is an Austin-based singer and performer. There is an impulse to say that she is a drag character, but Paul Soileau, the actual Social Security number-having man “behind” Christeene doesn’t really like the word ‘drag’ that much in this case, and neither do I, except as a way of understanding on a basic level that yes, this is a man dressed up as a person in high heels and makeup with a woman’s name. Anyway. Christeene is the best. She and her backup dancers T-Gravel and C-Baby perform tonight at Glasslands in Williamsburg. Below is an email chat with Christeene.

I saw you play at Los Globos in Los Angeles. My friend turned to me during the performance with tears in her eyes and said she hadn’t felt so alive in years and that you were a genius. Do you think you have a gift for bringing people back to life? Do you think you’re a genius?

I ain’t no fuggin genius butt i doo like to see peeps rise up and stank it out when da nay nay gits up in derr face. Iz majiikal

Where did you get the pink suede boots in the “Fix My Dick” video? Can I buy them from you?

All my boots have been gifts tooo me from special friends who like tooo see dem move. And fuck no u cant buy my boots.

Tell us your life story in a few sentences.

My life iz in my videos an in my songs

Do you live in Austin? Do you like it?

I doo live in Austin. Iz da shit an iz all da best cuz my baybeez live here like PJ Raval an JJ Booya an T Gravel. C Baby lives in another city now butt we still know when tooo kick it riyeeeet.

I think “Fix My Dick” might be my favorite song of yours. It just makes me feel good. What is your favorite song you perform? Why is it your favorite?

African mayonnaise is da jam dat makes da shit hit da fan an me an da boyz eat it up and crap it out wit joy.

You have an awesome body. What do you do to stay in shape?

stay alive

You have said that your shows are a celebration of Da Bootay, and that people like to celebrate a celebration of da bootay. Can you explain that more?

acutally my song bustin brown is a celebration of da bootaaay. da shows are a hole other mess of shit…but Bustin brown celebrates all da joys of lovin in da buh hole

Your video “African Mayonnaise” (above) involved your running around Austin going into malls and so on. Did you feel people enjoyed that chance to experience you? Or was there negativity?

Everybody luved whut we brought to da citaaay except da Scientology peeps an da authorities an if u watch close u can see da love from da gooood ones haaaay.

Have you ever been to NYC before? Do you like NYC? Do your dancers, T-Gravel ’n’ C-Baby, like New York? What do you guys want to see here?

we came to NYC about 2 years ago an of course we fugggin love da hell outta it. I wanna see a packed fuckin room wit cray cray baybeeez in it at da glassssslannnnds.

I see now you’re playing Joe’s Pub. A very classy venue. Does that make you nervous or excited or both? Or is it all the same to you?

all da same tooo me. A hole’s a hole and a stage is uh stage

Other Q&As;: A Q&A; With Bootsy Collins, American Hero and A Chat With Fran Lebowitz

Sarah Miller is the author of Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn and The Other Girl, which are for teens but adults can read on the beach. She lives in Nevada City, CA.

Thursday, November 22 — Thanksgiving!

Houston -3 At Detroit

While you are eating
turkey the Lions will be
getting their ass kicked. PICK: TEXANS

At Dallas -3 Washington

While you are taking
a tryptophan nap Romo
will be screwing up. PICK: REDSKINS

New England -6.5 At NY Jets

While you’re at a bar
avoiding your family
the Jets will still suck. PICK: PATRIOTS

Sunday, November 25

At Cincinnati -8 Oakland

Bengals’ A. J. Green
can’t be covered by any
group of human beings. PICK: BENGALS

Pittsburgh -1 At Cleveland

Byron Leftwich can’t
Quarterback his way out of
an airport restroom. PICK: BROWNS

At Indianapolis -3 Buffalo

Colts will pick themselves
up and take it to the Bills
in a great shootout. PICK: COLTS

Denver -10.5 At Kansas City

Being a fan of
the Chiefs is terrible for
your health and well-being. PICK: BRONCOS

Tennessee -3 At Jacksonville

The Jaguars’ offense
put on quite a show last week.
Go nuts, Chad Henne! PICK: JAGUARS

At Chicago Off Minnesota

Bears should let a
random fan with a moustache
be their quarterback. PICK: VIKINGS

Atlanta -1 At Tampa Bay

If Matt Ryan throws
five more interceptions they
should put him on ice. PICK: FALCONS

Seattle -3 At Miami

The Seahawks kinda
suck on the road. But the Fish
suck everywhere. PICK: SEAHAWKS

Baltimore -1 At San Diego

The Chargers will win
because they usually
don’t break your heart yet. PICK: CHARGERS

San Francisco -2.5 At New Orleans

Colin Kaepernick
is fun to watch but voodoo
beats his good juju. PICK: SAINTS

At Arizona -2.5 St. Louis

Former St. Louis
team turns current residents
into frozen custard. PICK: CARDINALS

At NY Giants -2.5 Green Bay

Eli Manning must
wake up from his coma or
the Giants hit snooze. PICK: PACKERS

Monday, November 26

At Philadelphia -2.5 Carolina

The proud Philly fans
deserve a better effort
than these green sad frauds. PICK: PANTHERS

Last week’s Haiku Picks went 9–5. That’s 73–85–3 for the season. Movement in the right direction! Have a great holiday!

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.

“A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans’ e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law. [Senator Pat] Leahy’s rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — to access Americans’ e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant.”
 — Maybe we’re all better off without the Senate protecting our Internet privacy. UPDATE: Tech industry people get angry, Leahy kills the warrantless part, for now.

In honor of Thanksgiving, here is a dramatic reading of The Last Day, by Francisco Dao, published yesterday on Pando Daily. Francisco Dao is a “startup pitch consultant” and the author of the remarkably titled book Killer Attitude: 53 Rules of Unstoppable Confidence, in which he relates a little of his story: “At 24, when other college grads were begging for a good performance review, I was starting a business that would soon be bringing in slightly over a million dollars in revenue.” So basically this a story of hubris and pride and insanity, just like the William S. Burroughs Thanksgiving message, only totally absurd and hilarious.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, volunteers have spontaneously organized to help the many, many people whose homes were destroyed or damaged by the storm. Many displaced or electricity-lacking NYC residents are still in need of hot meals. Occupy Sandy has been coordinating deliveries and making some food at their hubs in Brooklyn, but a lot of the food they’re distributing is coming from various kitchens in churches and schools and even homes, and some of those volunteers are also finding ways to deliver the food themselves. (Here’s what’s happening and where to help for Thanksgiving.)

This outpouring of community support gives me a schizoid blend of alternately heartwarmed and terrified feelings. On the one hand, it’s inspiring to see people band together in this way, but on the other hand, it’s deeply scary to know that, right after the storm, a loose web of volunteers were the only sources of food for a lot of people. We live in weird times. It seems like knowing how to cook for a lot of people is an important life skill for right now and the scary looming climate-changed future. Sorry to be so apocalyptic! Many of these tips are also applicable to your big family Thanksgiving.

Ann Carroll has been coordinating volunteer efforts at the Greenpoint Reformed Church nearly every day since the storm. Ann got involved with volunteering at the church’s soup kitchen a few years ago, at around the same time that she was transitioning from restaurant cooking to grad school for medieval studies. Now she not only helps cook dinner for around 80 soup kitchen clients every week that she can, she also cares for a thriving garden in the church’s backyard and runs a supper club that helps the kitchen buy food in the lean winter months, when CSA-donated vegetables aren’t in season.

I quizzed Ann about her tactics last Thursday as she drove 250 meals’ worth of potato soup, squash soup, broccoli-cauliflower gratin, braised greens and boiled carrots that she and a handful of volunteers had just finished cooking from Greenpoint to the Occupy Sandy hub in the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew at 520 Clinton Avenue.

Like a lot of cooks, Ann considers a lot of what she does obvious or intuitive, but a lot of what she considers second-nature came as a surprise to me when I first saw her at the stove. I asked her to break it down for people who don’t typically find themselves cooking for a crowd — i.e., most people, even really good home cooks. Here, I’ve combined what she told me with descriptions of what I saw her doing.

First, I asked her to imagine herself confronted for the first time with the rudiments of large-scale cooking: a few big pots and pans, a large quantity of motley, maybe-great, maybe-gross donated vegetables, meats or canned goods, an envelope with a small amount of cash in it that has to be stretched to buy salt, herbs, oil, milk, butter, and dollar-store aluminum trays. What’s the first thing to do?

“Cut up onions and garlic,” she said without a pause to think. “Because they go in everything.”

1. FIRST CUT UP ONIONS AND GARLIC, BECAUSE THEY GO IN EVERYTHING.

Okay, I said. What’s next?

“Get the soup out of the way. Oh, or if you’re serving potatoes or rice as the starch — get those started.”

2. GET THE SOUP OUT OF THE WAY

Here’s Ann’s recipe for the soup she made last Thursday, which is adaptable to almost any vegetable and any season. First, melt as much butter as you can spare plus some olive oil, or just olive oil if you haven’t got butter, at the bottom of a gigantic pot. Then add a thick layer of sliced onions and garlic — you can fill the pot about a quarter full, because of how much the onions cook down. Add bay leaves and a bunch of thyme, which you’ll fish out later if you remember to. Add a bit of salt, to help onions cook down, but not too much — you can always add salt, but you can’t take it out, so it’s best to season at the end.

When the onions are translucent, fill the pot almost full of cut-up vegetables — not a random motley combination of veggies if you can help it, maybe one or two thematically linked vegetables. Broccoli and cauliflower. Leeks and potatoes. A bunch of cans of corn, in a pinch. Potatoes or turnips are always a welcome addition. Your goal is to make as much of everything as possible, so as you eyeball quantities, always err on the side of more. Last Thursday the vegetables were squash, rutabagas and potatoes.

Add liquid — stock if you’ve got it, but in all likelihood water — just to cover, bring to a boil (this might take approx. forever), then reduce the heat to a simmer while you make everything else.

When the rest of the meal is cooked, finish the soup by partly pureeing it. An immersion blender does a great job of this, and if you forgot to remove the thyme bunch it’ll do that for you by winding the twigs around its blade. A potato masher works too. If you’re adding milk, cheese or sour cream, now is the time, but don’t bring the soup back to a boil after this addition — it might curdle. Season with salt and pepper.

3. MAKING LOTS OF POTATOES OR RICE

Try to avoid having to peel potatoes. If they’re anything other than russets, you can get away with just scrubbing. You can put way more potatoes in the pot than you’d think. Ditto pasta, although you have to stir to keep it from sticking.

Making a giant pot of rice seems daunting because of rice’s mysterious nature — for small quantities, we’re used to putting the lid on and hoping for the best. It helps to know that if you take the lid off your giant pot of rice and it has absorbed all the water but is still crunchy, you can add more water (!!) and it will come out fine. As with seasoning, you can’t take something out, but you can always add. Don’t stir. Don’t stir rice. Just don’t stir it, ever.

When the potatoes are cooked through, drain them and then mash them with as much milk and butter as you can. They can absorb a lot.

4. ACTUALLY, ABOUT STIRRING IN GENERAL: COOL IT!

A lot of times we think we have to “look busy” in the kitchen. If you stop moving things around so much, it gives them a chance to cook evenly or caramelize. With a few exceptions, you can ignore food while it cooks much more than you might think.

5. WINTER VEGGIES AND GREENS: DEFAULT RECIPES THAT ALWAYS WORK

If life gives Ann carrots or other roots — parsnips, rutabagas, turnips — she likes to cut them into uniform chunks or coins and sauté them on high heat with butter or olive oil, a little tiny bit of white sugar to help them caramelize, and thyme. (She loves thyme — it’s cheap, readily available, lasts a long time and tastes good in almost everything. It also has natural antibiotic properties, which can’t be a bad thing.)

Don’t overstir. Deglaze the pan with stock, wine, or — most likely all you’ve got — water.

Tender greens go in salad. Tougher greens — chard, bok choy, kale, collards, tat soi, etc. — are great braised. Ann starts a pot with onions and garlic, as for soup, then adds washed, un-drained (i.e., wet) greens, adding extra liquid if they’re too dry, and a bit of brown sugar.

6. WHERE’S THE MEAT?

Ann is a vegetarian, so she doesn’t love to cook meat. These meals are going to be transported for a long time and might not be able to be reheated to a safe temperature — it’s probably safer not to have meat in these situations. She has been getting donations of ham and other cold cuts, which she chops into cubes and incorporates into baked pasta dishes or potato gratins.

7. GRATINATE IT!

Ann’s technique for making rich, delicious casseroles could not be simpler. First, she steams the vegetables in the trays they’ll be served in, by covering them with a bit of water and putting their lids on then sticking them in the oven til they’re crisp-tender. Then she makes a béchamel sauce — a roux of flour and butter or oil, to which milk is slowly added — and tops up the trays with it. She then adds a layer of shredded cheese, when available, and pops the trays back in the oven.

8. HERE, SAVE YOURSELF SOME PREP TIME.

If you can get away with it — if they’re not totally filthy or hairy — avoid peeling organic vegetables. Peels are good for you!

8. HOW HOT IS THE OVEN?

350–375.

9. HOW LONG DO THINGS COOK?

Til they’re done or it’s time to serve or deliver them. Hopefully, the former comes first.

Emily Gould is a bookstore owner, writer, and yoga teacher in New York.