The Right Way to Adult Pre-Game a Feast
Though a time-honored tradition for youth, Pre-Gaming tends to fade away as you get older. High Schoolers will pre-game parties, events, dinners, TV Shows…pretty much anything. And I’m fine with that. As someone who never much liked parties or events, the value of pre-gaming seems obvious. The goal is to arrive already in that slightly elevated mindset that makes enjoyment easier. If you like parties and events, you don’t NEED to pre-game. You’re already happy to be there.
And yet, as you get older, the desire to pre-game diminishes. Drinking AT parties and events becomes standard fare. The central social role of parties is much diminished. And the effects of alcohol gradually increase. By the time most of us are out of college, pre-gaming is a thing of the past.
Until it isn’t.
Like so many things, our pre-gaming proclivities carve a great u-shaped path across our life. We end up going back to things we grew out of, but usually in a much worse way. By the time we are drooling, wearing adult diapers and pointing to make ourselves understood, it’s time to call it a day.
And yet, pre-gaming is the rare exception to this depressing trend. Because it doesn’t just come back into our lives, it comes back better.
Drinking whatever crap you can unearth so that you aren’t too nervous to get a coherent sentence out at a party isn’t exactly the high life. Schlitz? I don’t feel bad about pre-gaming but I sure as shit feel bad (in every sense of the words) about drinking Schlitz, Stroh’s, and Mickeys all of which, I am sad to say, crossed my lips before one-party or another.
These days, though, the one thing that’s common to youthful parties and family dinners is that I generally feel about the same level of awful afterward. If I’m going to drink wine, inhale food, and finish with some dessert representing the calorie equivalent of FAANG stock in the S&P, I need to seriously pre-game. It’s easy to say I should eat or drink less, but I’m one of those people who have a very hard time not eating/drinking if there is something in front of me. It could be a bowl of Lays chips or a 13-course meal, if it’s there, I’m going to put it in my mouth. And given the timing of these big dinners and the way I feel at the end of the meal, there isn’t going to be any exercise afterward.
Which is why I’ve come to believe that pre-gaming your holiday meals with a sizeable hike is the perfect strategy.
Finding the right trail for a pre-game requires a delicate balance. Let a group decide and you will end up with the dreaded “walk”. That’s great for getting out of the house and away from the TV or kitchen but it’s useless for pre-gaming. On the other hand, a grueling hike can be too much. You don’t want to feel tired and sore when you’re eating or (God forbid) cooking. Pre-game hikes are also a little bit limited on time. Nobody gets up early to hike on holidays (at least in my family) and there’s the cooking looming over everything.
This can be especially tricky since we don’t do traditional holiday dinners. No turkey or stuffing in our house. None of us really like turkey, and many years ago we decided to do something different: picking a cuisine or theme and putting together an entire menu. It’s become a family tradition of its own — as sacred as whatever you consider your special cornbread stuffing. My daughters grew up with it and have made it their own. To do anything else is for them, and I quote from movie that’s also a holiday family tradition, “Inconceivable”!
Which means we’re making a lot of new dishes no one has ever cooked before and everyone is cooking something(s). Over the years, we’ve tackled everything from the obvious (French, Italian, Japanese) to the obscure (American Indian, Pacific Islander, Movie Dishes) and we’ve been doing it so long it feels like we’re starting to run out of world. This year we did Hot-Pot. That eliminates some of the work since most things get cooked at the table, but the amount of prep-work was pretty staggering.
That meant a get-back-by-2ish hike targeting our 7pm dinner kick-off.
This “go to” pre-game hike threads the needle. It’s close to me. Pre-game hikes, like relationships, benefit from geographic proximity. I can walk to the trail though I usually don’t since I prefer to start in a specific place. It can be hiked in about 2 hours, and while it isn’t super-hard it includes a little more than 1,000 feet in elevation gain over five miles, some great views, and enough steep grading to give it meaning.
The hike begins inside San Domenico school deep in the Sleepy Hollow section of San Anselmo.
Go to the very end of Butterfield Road, enter the campus and curve around to the north of the main school, parking by the solar panel array on the hillside. A fire-road leads up and to the right, quickly taking you into a breath-snatching ascent. This is a classic Marin valley to ridge affair, so you know you’re going to go uphill, but the first 15 minutes to get up to the 680 trail are tough. A lot of the initial ascent is 20–25 degree grade and it’s a slog.
Fortunately, it’s not long before you get a break. The trail levels and curves to the left giving you sweeping views of the ridgeline ahead.
Yep, you’re going up there. The trail then turns sharply uphill for one last push to the junction with our main trail — the 680. You’ll see the fence-line above you and when you get to the fence, it’s a hard 90 onto the 680.
Now you are in for a good stretch of well-graded ascent with a smattering of very short steep climbs thrown in. You’ll start in shade, then, when you emerge onto the ridge, climb into sunshine. On the wrong day (unless you’ve brought a kite), the winds can be fierce from this point on. Today it was crisp but crystalline with hardly a breath of wind. A recent and out-sized storm has turned everything green again and left small pools of muddy water all along the trail. The 680 turns up into the hillside and a series of switchbacks lead up the highest ridge-line and then a short, steep spur tail will take you to the fence that runs along the very crest of the highest hill. Those little spurts of vertical are what you need in a pre-game hike to clear the mind, work the lungs, and get just the right amount of burn.
The views from here are stunning. A David Lean long-shot of the great exurban hills of Marin. Across the Bay, Mt. Diablo dominates the skyline. Further south rise the spires of the City. Then Mt. Tam, our own appropriately Marin-sized mountain, and home to at least half the great hikes hereabouts, circles into view. Keep turning and you’ll see the ridge shooting off to the west toward the ocean and another valley ripped across the land toward the north. Beautiful in every direction.
Sadly, done this way, the 680 is a true out-and-back though I’m pretty sure that if you head back down the Smith Ridge Fire Road you can find a tail that will take you back to the other side of San Domenico.
Today, I’m back by 2:30 and ready to get in the way in the kitchen. I have achieved that perfect pre-game state, a readiness to enjoy, that is the point of the whole thing.
And Hot Pot? Highly recommended for a family feast. Great for Thanksgiving, Christmas and totally perfect for New Years Eve. It keeps the food flowing for an extended period of time without inducing absolute food coma and it’s friendly to every type of eater.
And that menu? My youngest (though now very much an adult) daughter photoshopped that by starting with a local SF restaurant menu. I quiver to think how long it would have taken me to produce, but my girls take their holiday meals seriously (and are way better at Photoshop). Follow the x’s on the left-hand side (one broth, tomato-based) along with our own custom Sauce Bar, and the right-hand side is what we had.
My personal favorites from the Hot Pot were the enokis, the udon noodles, and the short rib.
Garlic Green Beans and homemade Onion Pancakes (well — it was all home-made) also hit.
We were sans any children this year, but kids would love it.
This did require a different kind of pre-game on Wednesday, a trip to the H-Mart in San Francisco and what proved to be, by a city mile, the most expensive H-Mart trip in this man’s history. Usually, I walk out of there with a cart-full of Ramen and frozen Gyoza. Short-rib and Wagyu? A little pricier. In the end, it looks like it cost us about what trip to the restaurant would have, though I did come away with some Ramen and Gyoza too. Turkey is cheaper but…
The last few scraps of meat went to the cats, a bit of cabbage hit the compost, and everything else was gone. No leftover turkey to drag joylessly around on Friday’s hike.
The tradition is dead. Long live the tradition.