Here’s this week’s Smartmom from the Brooklyn Paper:
The night before Memorial Day, Mrs. Kravitz and Mrs. Cleavage were baking and bitching in preparation for their Third Street building’s first BBQ of the season.
Mrs. Kravitz was rolling dough for her pies. Earlier, she’d prepared a pecan filling, and bright red and pink cherry halves in a sugary mix for a cherry pie.
The scene was like something out of a quaint Southern kitchen. Two Southern girls (one from Texas, the other from North Carolina) transplanted to Brooklyn, channeling their southern childhoods spent baking pies.
Or so Smartmom imagined.
There was something so cozy about it. Smartmom admired the ease with which Mrs. Kravitz rolled the dough — like it was second nature; something her mama taught her how to do.
Or so Smartmom imagined.
Mrs. Cleavage sat on a high stool by the toaster and prepared a delicious pasta salad with snap peas; she wasn’t happy when Mr. Kravitz and Smartmom wanted a preview.
“I’m going to have to make another one tomorrow if you people don’t stop taking bites,” she threatened.
The conversation moved seamlessly from one juicy topic to another (husbands, ex-husbands, children, parents, neighbors, and friends). But mostly it was food talk — a running commentary on what was being prepared.
In the dining room, Mr. Kravitz and another neighbor were trying to figure out how to make a proper mojito. After much trial and error (Errors? What errors?) they settled on a recipe.
Finally, when the pecan pie was ready, Mrs. Kravitz offered tastes. Truthfully, It didn’t look like any pecan pie Smartmom had ever seen. It didn’t taste right either.
“It needs more sugar,” Mrs. Cleavage said.
“Too many eggs. It’s too eggy,” Mrs. Kravitz said tasting the pie.
“It needs more sugar,” Mrs. Cleavage said again.
“So eggy. It’s like a pecan quiche,” Mrs. Kravitz said chewing slowly.
“It needs more sugar,” Mrs. Cleavage said one more time.
“I forgot the sugar. I forgot to put sugar in,” Mrs. Kravitz gushed.
“What do you think I’ve been telling you?” Mrs. Cleavage told her seriously.
At 4 pm on Memorial Day, Mr. Kravitz fired up the grill near the recycling pails in the building’s cement front yard.
The building next door, festooned with red, white and blue balloons, was also having a BBQ — a bittersweet goodbye party for a family moving back to Australia after a few years on Third Street.
A teenager from down the street, a talented young chef, brought over his homemade BBQ sauce, which was instantly slathered on the ribs. As the meat cooked, a gaggle of neighbors and friends placed pot-luck dishes on the makeshift table — some plywood boards over garbage pails covered with a red paper tablecloth.
Ravi, Smartmom’s 14-year-old neighbor, brought down his sitar and played a complicated raga for the crowd. The music, buried beneath the sound of the children’s water fight and the insistent chatter of the grown ups, provided an exotic soundtrack for the May night.
“Is it the Mojito’s or are these the best ribs you’ve ever tasted?” Mr. Kravitz asked Smartmom. She had to agree. The spare ribs were so good that she couldn’t stop herself from eating them — her fingers brown and sticky.
Then it was time for Mrs. Kravitz’s pies: old fashioned country pies in the midst of this very urban BBQ.
“Still needs more sugar,” Mrs. Cleavage said slowly chewing Mrs. Kravitz’s cherry pie.
But the kids didn’t care. They didn’t want anything to do with the pies.
It was the s’mores they were after. They gathered round the small BBQ with their marshmallows on sticks and prided themselves on their roasting technique — not too dark, not too light. Perfect.
A little boy from down the street called Smartmom over to see what he’d done.
“This one’s perfect,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” Smartmom told him, admiring the lightly browned marshmallow.
“It’s for you,” he told her.
Smartmom was touched. She watched as he patiently placed his perfect marshmallow on a graham cracker, added a square of Hershey chocolate and covered it with another graham cracker.
Once the marshmallows were gone, the party seemed to wind down. Neighbors looked for their pots and pans.
“Thanks for letting us glom on to your BBQ,” Smartmom’s friend Brooklyn Mabel told her. “We always glom on to your BBQs,” she said.
“We love to have you,” Smartmom shouted after her as she walked toward Sixth Avenue with her husband, daughter and son.
The clean-up went quickly. Smartmom filled large contractor bags with miscellaneous garbage; neighbors collected wine and beer bottles and tossed them into the recycling. Mr. Kravitz carried the plywood downstairs; he let the BBQ stay out for the night as the charcoals cooled. There was a feeling of summer in the air as the first BBQ of the season came to an end. The children went upstairs to sleep.
It was a school night, after all.
Some viewpoints from members of Park Slope Parents: 
