banana pudding

ingredients

• 1 can (~14 oz) of sweetened condensed milk
• 1.5 cups water, ice-cold
• 1 package (3.4 oz) of instant vanilla pudding mix
• 3 cups heavy cream, cold
• 1 box (~11 oz) of vanilla wafer cookies
• 3-4 just-ripe bananas

sweetened condensed milk

My last memory of New York City was from the back of my dad's Toyota Sienna, struggling to catch a decent view of the skyscrapers. Part of my view was obscured by the Red Sox bumper sticker plastered across the back passenger window from the inside. We'd recently won the World Series again, and we were paranoid a little cautious of crazed Yankees fans tailing our ass.

I don't remember what younger me was able to see, but it apparently wasn't enough to leave a lasting memory. Since then, I'd pass the city numerous times during my trips between DC and Boston, but I'd never see anything more than the underbelly of Moynihan Train Hall and a distant shot of the skyline. It took two decades before I stepped foot in the Big Apple again. By then, "just another city" was the impression I'd had of the place. The only thing that wowed me was the four-hour layovers during overnight train rides, and I mean "wowed" as in wow I can't fucking believe we're not moving yet.

I didn't know what to expect when I came up the escalator from the train platform, but I don't think I could've ever been prepared for Moynihan. The claustrophobic ramp suddenly opened up into a wide open world of glass and sunlight. I saw people of all walks of life crowded around announcement screens, necks craned upward as they awaited updates on their train. More people were hurrying across the tiled floor, struggling to beat the line at a boarding gate or at one of the restaurants in the food hall. Even more people were scattered at random stationary points, busy talking to an in-person or cellular companion, and they didn't spare me a glance as I weaved my way through the crowd. It was very clear that this was a city where people had things to do and places to be.

I felt like a blobfish. Without the compression of the crowded escalator, there was no force to keep my brain contents from tumbling out into the airy expanse of the train hall. My thoughts and priorities floated out of my ears and into the train hall's air, where they got lost amidst the bustling of the hustling travelers. Scatterbrained, it took me ten minutes to register the signs overhead pointing me to various points of interest: street exits, restaurants, and restrooms. No subway signs. Google Maps also wasn't helpful in pointing out the C line entrance. After another five minutes of wandering, I accepted that I'd need to ask an employee for directions.

But first, a treat.

Dana had suggested I grab something from Magnolia Bakery in Penn Station, coincidentally located in the Amtrak section that's better known as Moynihan Train Hall. From the group chat's excited reactions, it seemed like a famous place. Not that I'd know. It's already hard work trying to winnow the chaff of the DMV food scene – when would I have time to learn about good food in other cities? I'd had four hours on the Amtrak to do last minute research for this New York trip, and I spent none of it doing a basic search on what Magnolia Bakery had to offer.

To me, Magnolia seemed like just another bakery. The line ran alongside a long counter that was packed with slices of many flavors of cake, glass cases filled with just as many flavors of cupcakes, baskets of cookies and brownies, and various cheesecakes and tarts. Then again, New York had seemed like "just another city" until I stepped foot above ground. Maybe there was something magical behind the surface-layer crumbs.

And magic certainly kicked in for me at Magnolia Bakery. After picking up a lemon bar, I looked left to the earlier sections of the counter for a potential second snack. That's when I saw it. Hovering in the background, perfectly framed by the entrance door of the bakery, was a sign for the stairs to the A, B, and C lines. I must've been smiling like stupid when I paid for my bar. I tipped extra, just to pay my gratitude to Coincidence, and skipped out of the bakery despite my weary ankles.

water

As someone who'd lived in downtown DC for four years, I'm no stranger to a big city. DC has tall buildings and miles of thoroughfare, but things feel like they've been scaled up for breathing room, like it's out of reverence for the land being host to the seat of government. In contrast, New York demands reverence because of its scale. Buildings must tower, stations must expand, bridges must multiply, and so on. Layers upon vertical layers of residence, business, transportation, and often a combination of all will be stacked upon every horizontal square inch of the place. Take one step, and you'll pass by three apartment units, a bagel shop, one and a half ads for skincare products, and a bajillion-dollar court case. It's everything, everywhere, all at once.

In contrast, Dana and Hunter's apartment was a tiny corner of a new high-rise on the edge of Brooklyn. The living space was deceptively spacious. Almost the entirety of the out-facing walls was floor-to-ceiling window, giving us a bird's-eye view of New York, but take a second and you realized just how small the place was. Two-thirds of the apartment was the open living area, and it couldn't fit much. A mock galley kitchen between the wall and bar counter. One couch. A small coffee table. A TV unit. A single standing desk.

This corner of Brooklyn would be home to three times the usual number of occupants for the weekend. Aaron and Erika took the bus from Boston, I just came from DC, and Kacey would be driving up from Philadelphia once she was done with work. I've seen all of them at least once over the last two years, but never in the same place. Being spread across four cities will do that, not to mention a certain health fiasco in the early 2020s. It'd been a while since the six of us had hung out together, and nothing was going to stop me from being excited about this trip, not even the confines of this shoebox apartment.

Still, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed my stay at their apartment. We hopped all around the city to check out various cafes and restaurants, took scenic strolls along the Hudson, and spent time at a bustling market near Brooklyn Bridge. Exploring New York was great, but the wind tunnels and crowded sidewalks make it hard to have a decent group conversation. Oftentimes, I gave up talking over the chaotic background noise. I much preferred being in the isolated apartment, abusing its peace and quiet to debate crass one-liners in Quiplash or to provide unqualified commentary over a cast of the Premier League.

One of my favorite stay-home moments came on Saturday. Dana and Hunter were hosting a housewarming party that night, and she was eager to make a banana pudding dessert with a tried-and-true recipe for Magnolia Bakery's own signature banana pudding. The preparations were a team effort...kinda. The night before, Erika found the best bananas left in the store, Hunter paid for the bananas and other ingredients, and Aaron found a way to make the bananas ripen faster (put them in a paper bag and fold over the top). Saturday morning, I sliced up the just-ripe bananas while Dana worked on the "pudding" part of the dessert, then together we assembled the pudding while Kacey helpfully looked on from her side of the bar counter.

Our ingredient proportions were wildly off. There were maybe twice as many banana slices as there were Nilla wafers, so we had to stretch out the pudding mix and space out the Nilla wafer placements to accommodate most of the bananas. We weren't sure if we'd waited long enough for the pudding to set before folding it with the whipped cream. We weren't even sure if there was enough time before the party for the pudding to soften the wafer cookie layers. If we'd put up this dish for sale at Magnolia Bakery, our asses would run the store bankrupt within the business week. But it wasn't about making the perfect banana pudding for the party; it was about making the banana pudding together, especially with these friends.

vanilla pudding

I've known this crew since I was in sixth grade. My parents had signed me up for some overnight "Chinese cultural camp," and their lack of elaboration about this camp made me think it was a scam. My first summer there, I was too suspicious of everything and painfully homesick, so I can't say that I actually noticed my fellow campers. All of my camp acquaintances had initially made up an amorphous, singular blob of "Other Guys" in my brain. I didn't care about them. This wasn't my "real" life; this one week of summer didn't matter. Everything I cared about was outside of this place and time, so why should I care about anything inside?

Then came middle school. It was a rough learning moment in and out of the classroom, and I found myself overwhelmed by all kinds of insecurities I didn't even know could exist. Most crippling were my social insecurities, where I wasn't sure that my friends from elementary school really cared about me. I was craving a connection, and I wanted it to be at camp where there was a community of Chinese American kids who were more likely to understand me. I didn't care if it would only last for seven days, only 1.82% of the year. I wanted it to be a friendship that couldn't be "tainted" by the change and chaos of life during the school year.

At the age of thirteen, I took a hard, long look at the Other Guys and started to make out friend-shaped individuals. It started with Kacey, who was always in sync with my niche pop culture references, and Dana, whose straight-faced honesty was consoling when I was always afraid of phony friends, but I was pleasantly surprised by how many more people I wanted to know better. At fourteen, I discovered the wonders of Facebook and Skype, and I started bonding with my camp cohort via group chat and calls. Aaron and Erika stood out to me then – Aaron, whose conversations walked a fine line between bottom-of-the-barrel toilet humor and sobering questions of an epistemological nature, and Erika, whose soft voice contrasted with her opprobrium of the entitled trust fund babies saturating her new high school. At fifteen, we started volunteering together as counselors-in-training, where I'd have many a late-night talk with the others about our greatest hopes and deepest fears for the future. That was when I really got to know Hunter and all his frank wisdom beneath the lighthearted snark I'd assumed was his entire identity for so many years.

That was when I started to think, Hey, even if I only see them for one week of the year, maybe these guys are also my "real" friends.

When college came and we were still able to meet up during overlapping breaks, it seemed like there was only up to go. Then covid struck and put a damper in things with a year-long limbo of online classes and social isolation. I can't remember how many friendships I'd let wither away because of the indolence that plagued my new sedentary lifestyle. There was a moment in the summer of 2020 when I'd scrolled through old pictures on my phone, then stopped at an album taken during my last year as a camp counselor. So many pictures came from our end-of-week afterparty, where I remember hugging my friends with happy tears streaming down my face as I promised them that my end with camp wasn't the end of our bond, that we could look forward to making more memories outside of this one week of summer. I was taken aback by the timestamps which said it'd barely been a year since that moment.

I was always passively aware of how much of my social life I was losing, one socially-distant day at a time, but looking at those pictures was the moment that I was explicitly confronted with that great loss. By then, it felt like it was too late to reach out. For half of the time I've known them, I only got to see my camp friends for 1.82% of the year. Missing even one instance of that 1.82% interaction dealt a devastating blow of absence to my heart. I knew the pandemic couldn't last forever, but I had an awful feeling that the dying flame of my camp friendships wouldn't last long enough to see a return to normalcy.

That's why I'll always give my greatest gratitude to Hunter for taking a chance on us. One day, in the fall of 2021, he sent a message in the group chat and asked if anyone had time for a group call. Just like the good old days, I'd thought. We started basic with Among Us, then moved to the classic of Skribbl.io, then made it a goal to play a different online game every week. We pointedly skirted around pandemic-related topics, not wanting to disrupt the delicate balance that allowed us to return to in-person classes. These calls were a place for us to forget about the recent chaos of the world and pretend that we were picking things up right where we'd left off in the summer of 2019.

heavy cream

Even before the pandemic, most of the times I've hung out with my camp friends have revolved around food. We'd eat out at restaurants, then loiter around the neighborhood – usually to sate Erika or Dana's boba cravings. I liked how low-key it was, but at the same time, it seemed like we couldn't hang out properly without using the excuse of grabbing a meal. Were we interesting enough to each other for a long conversation to occur without any mention of the food?

Then I'd take a bite of the food and instantly let go of that anxiety. My friends have never once missed with their recommendations, and, with Dana's meticulous planning, New York adhered to that trend. In Greenwich Village, the comforting aromas of Lao Ma Spicy's dry hot pot dishes reached me all the way from their kitchen. For someone who shies away from spice, it was the first time I was looking forward to eating a Sichuan dish, and it didn't disappoint. In East Village, 886 had a vibrant city night aesthetic that brought an extra layer of enjoyment to their Taiwanese street food. If I'm being honest, I often didn't know what the heck I was eating, what with the dim lighting and all, but who cares, all those dishes fucking slapped.

Erika was inspired by social media to point us to Flipper's in SoHo, which delivered one of the best and most beautiful brunches I've ever imagined. (Sorry to all the DC brunch stans, I need to give credit where it's due.) The morning started out less than optimally. After staying up talking until 3 AM, we woke up to a 9 AM alarm, only to find that the waitlist wasn't open. One blink, and suddenly we were looking at 2 hours' worth of rival customers on the list. Hunter also had to slip out to pick up a surprise birthday cake for Dana, and it was absolute chaos trying to time our reservation requests around his moving window of an ETA. Dana, Erika, and I finally came up with a plan to stagger our waitlist requests over 30 minute periods, and even then, we were sweating bullets trying to see if we'd catch the last subway before our last waitlist request got bumped off. Somehow, we made it before my first request expired, so I had the honor of being the one to bestow my name upon the hostess...and to let the others know we'd be waiting another 30-45 minutes, given the size of our party. Such is the pain of a six-person party valiantly attempting to find seating in New York's food scene.

About a quarter to noon, we were taken to the upstairs dining area, and it was well worth the wait. I mean, just look at the pictures of the food below. I wished I had a better camera on my phone so I could do these pancakes justice. Erika had told us she was interested in Flipper's for their pancakes, but she hadn't mentioned they were all soufflé pancakes. One gentle scoop of the fork, and you can practically feel the promise of fluffy, jiggly heaven. It's a full sensory experience, one that I believe justified my shameless requests for more bites of my friends' pancake orders.

My contribution to the group effort was an order of the eggs Benedict, which I split with Erika. I'm a sucker for smoked salmon, plus it's a common menu item that serves as my personal yardstick for American brunch restaurants. This was a rare instance in which halving the dish with a knife didn't lead to total collapse. The English muffin had the structural integrity to support all the other components while still being fluffy and light. The salad layer prevented most of the tomato moisture from seeping into the muffin and weakening it, and the weight of the tomato also kept most of the salad leaves from falling out when I lifted it with my fork. I would've preferred the yolk to be less runny, but the English muffin clocked in overtime by being a wonderful edible sponge with which I cleaned up my yolk-soaked plate.

Beyond the food, Flipper's really nailed the atmosphere of an American city brunch place: the large windows set in between exposed brick walls, the lovingly used but well-maintained white oak tables, the low-hanging lamps with their warm yellow lights, the plants hanging near the skylights, the bold white and black hexagonal tiling. Between the dozens of customers excitedly chattering around us and the many passersby down on the streets of SoHo, this place was brimming with an infectious kind of warmth and life. It really felt like a diorama of New York life: a big and busy city that has many surprise pockets of welcomeness.

With this group, we can make the atmosphere cozy even if the restaurant or the food aren't pulling their weight in the presentation. Rather than the mindset of having used meals as crutches to justify hangouts, it's more that we've always treated each other to restaurant food because that's how we show affection to those we care about. I know very well that sharing a meal is a valid language of love, and it's time I acknowledge that of my camp friends.

vanilla wafer cookies

On the topic of "welcomeness," the centerpiece of this New York trip was Dana and Hunter's housewarming party. They didn't want gifts, but that didn't stop the hosts from providing plenty at the event. Even before Kacey dropped ninety dollars on a liquor store haul, they already had a healthy stock of drinks and cocktail ingredients in their fridge.

I won't lie, I was a little nervous seeing the state of the fridge ahead of the party. I had no idea how many people were coming, and I was worried we were about to be joined by a whole football stadium of people. I love meeting people through mutual friends, but not in a volume that's NYC-big. At the same time, I was kind of hoping there would be a lot of people, otherwise I was scared I'd be meeting some heavy drinkers.

Luckily, the guests were all lovely. There was about twenty of us, giving me a wide range of entertaining personalities to mingle with. We managed to clear out the fridge and a half-dozen more cases of hard seltzer and beer, yet I never once felt like anyone was overbearing or nasty while drunk. If anything, they all perfectly paced themselves to be generously buzzed throughout the night, which gradually got them to be more open and talkative.

I got to meet a couple of Hunter's college friends, but most of the guests were from Dana's fraternity, some kind of professional one for engineering majors, so I shouldn't have been too surprised that they knew how to handle alcohol. There were her upperclassmen, Taron and Tasha, who gave plenty of recommendations for further sights to see in the city. Tiffany brought her dachshund puppy, and she coached that li'l guy to scamper around, tiptiptapping all over the hardwood the entire night. There was a trio of drunken babblers – Troy, Tristan, and Tex – who were in Dana's class and had lots to say about how she unintentionally terrorized the pledges when she ran recruitment. I spoke to Thomas for maybe only half an hour total, yet I immediately determined he was a long-suffering sales guy who was desperate to leave his company. (Godspeed, friend.) I was hoping to get some juicy gossip on Dana's college persona, but other than the intimidation that pledges initially felt, the brothers had nothing but nice things to say about her. Reliable. Honest. Loyal. It was almost infuriating how consistent she's been for all these years.

At midnight, Hunter brought out the cake he'd bought for his girlfriend. We tried to sing happy birthday, but most of us had just shredded our vocal chords over drunk karaoke, so I'm a bit sorry to Dana for the final product she got. This cake was pretty expensive, nearing a hundred dollars, which makes it a bit tragic that it made for my least favorite meal in New York. It was a nice combination of buttercream and floral jam, but the texture of the vanilla sponge was way underwhelming for the fat price. Nevertheless, it served its purpose well, seeing as how it distracted Dana and the rest of us from the banana pudding we'd made earlier. We agreed to start working on the pudding tomorrow morning, just a little snack before the four travelers of the group – Aaron, Erika, Kacey, and I – left the city.

The thought of our impending separation sobered me up a bit. Of all my friend groups, this one has always made me feel the strongest waves of FOMO. It's more than just living the furthest away and constantly seeing social media evidence of the locals meeting up without me. Sometimes I think too hard about how little time we've had together. This was something that was brought to light by the party, where I was a little envious of the strong bond Dana had forged with the college friends she'd known in only half the time she'd known me and the others.

I was only a little envious, though. I recognize that I'd be a pot calling a kettle black, seeing as how I've also gotten as close – if not closer – to my own college friends and don't feel any guilt about it. (It's almost like time isn't the sole determinant of a good friendship!) Now that I'm a working adult, so much of my friends' growth will inevitably happen out of sight, and I just have to hope that I'm growing in a trajectory that's compatible with theirs. It's a lesson I learned long ago when I was a camper; throughout those 51 weeks of separation, I had to have faith that my camp friends would still want to be friends with the newer me. Those 51 weeks have transformed into 500 miles, but that nugget of wisdom remains true.

bananas

I saw the impossible happen at a New York subway stop. We were rushing to Midtown Manhattan for an event reservation and barely caught the line to our destination. As we stumbled through the subway door, wheezing slightly from the brisk run, I noticed one young man sitting on the outermost seat of the row. I noticed him because he was looking at us funny, but it turns out he was one of Aaron's college friends who'd recently moved to the city for work.

What the hell were the chances of that happening? These two had no idea they were in the same city: one didn't know the other was visiting, the other didn't know the first was living there. And we're talking about that kind of coincidence happening in a place as huge as New York City. Out of all the subway lines, out of all the stops on that line, out of all the cars on that train.

Magic runs through New York's veins. I knew this as early as my visit to Magnolia Bakery, when the baked goods accidentally pointed me to the right subway entrance, and the surprise subway reunion affirmed this feeling. Maybe it was magic that made me feel so comfortable in a big city I've long forgotten, so much so that I loathed the thought of leaving. Or maybe it's a testament to the love I have for my camp friends.

After coming back from Midtown, we took out the banana pudding from the fridge and gave it a go. There weren't any appropriate containers left by the end of the weekend, so I dumped a spoonful of pudding into my recently-drained mug. It was simple and light on sweetness, making it a perfect respite for a weekend jam-packed with flavor and fun. It was exceptionally good, but the final flavor wasn't the point. I'm dead serious when I say it wasn't about the banana pudding but the friends we made along the way.

Observe the bananas. Their coloration remained light, having avoided excessive browning during their long stay in refrigeration. It was an unexpected benefit from our use of barely-ripe bananas. It was close to 9 PM when we went grocery shopping, so all that was left were green bananas. Aaron's resourcefulness was the only reason we could dream of using them in the pudding.

If you think about it, the bananas were only green because we'd waited for such an inopportune time to buy them. Dana and Hunter could've gotten the ingredients ready the day before, or even earlier in the day, when the store had better stock. The dessert preparation would've been stress-free, and the pudding would've been guaranteed to be ready for their housewarming party. But no, they waited until we were all in New York. They waited for Aaron to get lunch with a local friend, for Erika to visit local relatives, for me to find my way from Penn Station, and for Kacey to drive up from Philly. It was always about making it together.

To be honest, the sappier stuff came to me only after I was back in DC and starting to write about the trip. Even so, I felt the love in that banana pudding on that Sunday. It was in the way Dana carefully spooned it out into travel containers and in the way us travelers carefully bundled it up in our personal bags. For all that we've eaten together, we've always managed to leave the restaurant without any takeout. We've never had proof of our time together, no matter how transient the evidence. I couldn't help but think of this banana pudding as my very first souvenir from my camp friends.

instructions

1. Use a hand mixer to beat the heavy cream and water together on medium speed until well combined, about 2 minutes.
2. Add the vanilla pudding mix and beat on medium speed until smooth, 2-5 minutes. Make sure there are no lumps in the mixture.
3. Cover the bowl and refrigerate pudding mixture, at least 1 hour but overnight preferred.
4. In another bowl, use a hand mixer to whip the heavy cream on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form. Do not overwhip.
5. Incorporate pudding into whipped cream, one spoon at a time. Use either a rubber spatula or a hand mixer on low-medium speed. Don't leave any streaks of unincorporated pudding.
6. Put the pudding mixture in the refrigerator to chill as you slice the bananas. Aim for half or three-quarter inch slices, but who am I to tell you how to do anything.
7. Assemble in a medium glass bowl or individual serving cups. Spread a layer of pudding mix, a layer of vanilla wafer cookies, and a layer of banana slices. If you prefer a pudding-ier(?) banana pudding, add another layer of pudding between the cookies and bananas.
8. Repeat layers until the assembly nearly reaches the top of the vessel, ending with a pudding layer. (Optional garnish: crumble vanilla wafer cookies over the top.)
9. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or at least 6 hours before serving. The pudding will be good up to 4 days after initial assembly.