A day at the CIA. (No, the "good" CIA, silly.)

So here’s a question that’s been on my mind more and more lately:, what do you do for fun when you get older? And by older I mean once you’ve acquired all the customary trappings of the suburban bourgeoisie; ,not just the wrinkly kind of old. ,I mean where’s the challenge in simply aging? ,Everybody gets old. ,No, my goal is to age with the same sort of élan as Ivan Ilych. ,Except without all the existential horror and moral bankruptcy., You know what I mean.

Anyway, over the years I’ve found that having fun is getting more challenging than it used to be. After all, when you’re a kid all you need is a few of your knucklehead friends, a pocket full of cash and eight or ten hours to spend barhopping your way across the Village until you end up at McSorely’s. ,You know…, fun.

Now though, as ostensible adults, my Lovely Bride and I have been widening our horizons and trying new things. This last Saturday, for instance, we drove up to the Culinary Institute of America, (watch any of The Next Iron Chef.?) ,which offers all-day “enthusiast courses” which are not only a lot of fun but also very much like an episode of Iron Chef. Basically, we were let loose in one of their industrial teaching kitchens with about a dozen other “students,” ,a teaching chef, and two themed menus that we prepared together as teams.

Then once all the cooking was done we all sat together in one of the dining rooms and gorged on all the food we spent the day making, which was, in no particular order:, filet mignon, shrimp cocktail with cognac sauce, foi gras and caviar on toast points, Bellinis and Kirs, chocolate mouse, bananas foster, and then and rather a lot of Riesling and Medoc for good measure. It was, in short, as much a fun social event as it was culinary.

So then, feeling a little bit of that early winter ennui setting in? Try the CIA for a bit of grown up fun. After all, no matter how it turns out, McSorely’s will always be there for you, just in case.

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