A Taste Of...

A few nights ago I finished reading "Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone," a collection of essays edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler. I borrowed this book from Joe, who recommended it highly, and who received it himself upon high recommendation. I recommend it highly, too, particularly if meals are anything you ever take note of, or if you enjoy or hate or simply ever experience eating alone. We all do, I think.

I love to eat alone. Sometimes eating alone is really awful -- I hated it most when I was in India, because I ate in so many restaurants and was already a point of attention -- but most of the time, when I have the time to exploit my solitude, I love it.

I love to cook alone, too. I love to be cooked for (though I've committed the cardinal sin of taking it for granted) and I love to cook with somebody else who loves to cook. I love to eat in big groups or in very small ones, particularly if I'm eating with people who love to eat and who love to notice what they are eating and who love to acknowledge that they are noticing what they are eating. I also love to eat slowly, and I love to eat slowly with other people, because then I can be doubly sure that the meal is serving its full purpose and is nurturing more than just our bellies.

My favorite food to eat is food that is identifiable. I can tell what it is, how it grew, or where it came from (air? earth? water?). I love to eat simple food. I can revel in those complicated Indian curries, don't get me wrong, and I can delight in those dishes melded of endless lists of ingredients. Again, I know I have, in my life, complained about these "ornate" dishes, as I have called them, but they have their place on the table.

I love food to be well presented, attractive, and aesthetic on the plate, and preferably the table, and preferably in the entire room, including the window and the view. But that's getting idealistic.

My favorite food of all time is the unassuming sweet potato. I could write 10,000 words in jubilation on the tuber, but I won't. Because I didn't eat sweet potato for dinner tonight.

I'll tell you what I had for dinner tonight, but only because I just read "Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant" and it's full of confessions from respected people about some of the scary, strange (and delicious) things they prepare for themselves when left to themselves.

And because I believe that what precedes a meal is relevant (it is always relevant to me), I'll tell you that this meal followed a good, hard, encouraging run (despite the fact that it involved two dozen tedious circumambulations of a running track). And a long drink of cold water preceded it, and some pleasant, if rushed, stretching. I was hungry.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store and I waffled for a good five minutes in front of the canned fish section. If I don't eat enough protein, I start getting Charlie-horses in the night. And I wanted something that wasn't deep-fried. Most of the labeling was in Chinese, but here and there I caught "tuna!" and "sandwich!" in English.

I began thinking about Orchid Island, off the east coast of Taiwan, and how it has several tens of thousands of barrels of radioactive waste leaking into the ocean making people and fish sick. I thought about how the poor tuna have devastated populations and how they eat fishes that have already eaten smaller fishes and how they end up with mercury accumulated in their fat. I began thinking about how the oceans are connected, and began wondering where "American" tuna comes from anyway, and whether it's all the same tuna in grocery stores all over the world.

I decided I should eat smaller fish, like sardines or herring, as I always conclude when examining cans of tuna. I suppose I'm always looking for that label that will say "mercury free! Fished from an ocean with too many tuna! Extremely healthy! This fish wanted to die for you! Eat it and make the world better!" But I never see that label.

I found the familiar square tins - they looked like my kipper friends - but wait, these were all roasted eel! No kipper, no sardines. I went to the dried fish row and got a bag of shiny, dried, very stiff whole fish. They were so stiff I couldn't break them in half. They were mixed with slivered almonds and were about the same size. Very small. With hard, stern little faces. That was something.

And then I thought about my stiff calves again, wuss that I am, and how I wanted to run further tomorrow, and so I went and bought the cheapest can of tuna and thought about my future children and how I was endangering their health by exposing their tiny developing bodies to mercury my own body might be accumulating. What a sell-out.

I pondered vegetables for a good long while and ended up with three enormous and sparkling clean carrots (I think they power-wash them here before scrubbing them with brillo pads) and a bag of four long, thin cucumbers. Then I got some tofu, with a blessed label proclaiming NON GMO!, and soymilk, and hoped that my skin wouldn't turn white and my hair wouldn't start to fall out (isn't that what a high-soy diet is supposed to do to you?). I bought some fruit and crackers and was finished.

So what did I fix for dinner, you ask? Oh, it hit the spot. So I was tired, limber, freshly showered, and hungry. And I cut up half a carrot, and sliced up a whole cucumber, and then I dumped my can of tuna fish on top (which, unfortunately, was canned in some kind of oil), and then I poured raisins on top of that, and then, to top it off, a scoop of yesterday's cold brown rice.

Ahhhh. That was an hour ago and I still feel full, full, full. Aaaaah. Fresh food, fresh food, fresh food. My calve muscles are celebrating in a very laid back, relaxed kind of way. And I enjoyed eating alone because I knew that not many people would ever enjoy eating such a meal with me. And so, in my privacy, I could relish every bite, and didn't have to be embarrassed about such unseemly combinations.

Oh -- and I had some of those little dried fish for breakfast this morning. Pretty crunchy, and they seem to be sweetened with something, but they're alright, as long as you don't look too closely.