Dinner for One
We are just at the conclusion of our two week stretch at the cottage.
Preparing food for each other and guests has been a primary focus for D and I and I have loved every minute of it. But I will also be glad to be home and reacquaint ourselves with the kids and our mandatory Sunday suppers. Tonight the breeze is actually very cool and I also look forward to the time of making soups and stews with ingredients that I intend to fetch from St. Norbert Market-a pleasure that I also miss when at the cottage.
I am also anticipating the opportunity to eat alone again. This is a complicated feeling and one that I cannot express as eloquently as Ann Patchett in this excerpt from “Dinner for One, Please James”. I read a wonderful collection of food essays earlier this summer in a collection entitled: “Alone in the Kitchen an Eggplant” (edited by Jenni Ferrai-Adler).
“So while it is with deep and genuine pleasure to nuture those I love, it is an equal pleasure to be off the hook for the responsibility as well, to pass over food that is delicate and beautiful and complex in favour of the item that is likely to spoil. Eating as a simple means of ending hunger is one of the greatest liberties of being alone, like going to the movies by yourself in the afternoon, or back in those golden days of youth, having a cigarette in the bathtub. It is a pleasure to not have to take anyone else’s pleasures into account or explain why I like to drink my grapefruit juice out of the carton. Eating, after all, is a matter of taste, and taste cannot always be good taste. The very thought of maintaining high standards, meal after meal is exhausting. It discounts all the peanut butter that is available in the world.”
Kath’s quote: “Oh, the pleasure of eating my dinner alone!”-Charles Lamb
