Table for One

It wasn’t an epiphany, for more than a few years I have been aware eating a burrito over the sink is a personal bellwether; clanking a warning I am dangerously close to wandering into the social wilderness.

The moment was more akin to those rare instances when you really understand something for the first time. In this case I wasn’t mounting the top of the learning curve of algebra, I realized in spite of fairly good kitchen and social skills, I am a bad eater – bad, bad, very bad.

Mechanically, I usually can get food from my fork to mouth with few mishaps. I'll try anything and calorie wise, I can put it away. I don't talk with my mouth full of food nor repeatedly commit breaches of etiquette, I just eat alone too much - The byproduct of living alone, a protracted bachelorhood or perhaps at some point I ate in front of the TV once to often and unwittingly surrendered my ability to enjoy company over dinner.

With the realization my dinning acumen is sub-par, I’ve been forced to visit the idea that maybe, I don’t even like eating. For someone who has a spent most of his adult life attached to culinary pursuits, this is a hard piece of introspection.

• I like grocery shopping - the largess of the marketplace promises a world of possibility and creativity.
• I have a profound and abiding understanding of produce.
• I enjoy thinking about food.
• Talking about meals is a favorite pastime.
• I enjoy the act of cooking.
• I am happiest diddling around in the kitchen where the actions are at once so familiar and urgent, I can turn my brain off and spend some time focused on the matter at hand.

All good points, but none really address the larger issue of whether I like to eat. When I do something simple, like try to recall the last good meal I enjoyed, it is actually a relief to be able to instantly recollect dinners past so easily: There were really good ribs Tuesday, the previously posted gumbo worked out well, lamb chops and cauliflower gratin before that.

Maybe eating isn't something that can be parsed or divorced from other sensory inputs - for me anyway, thoughts of food are inseparable from all my other memories: Octopus in San Sebastian on my first trip that required a passport, sausage and beer at a bizarrely constructed Oktoberfest in Italian Piazza, papaya sprinkled with chili powder in Mexico, the first time I smelled lemongrass years ago & what it meant to be in the city, only 75 miles from home but so different. Even spending time with my brother last week is bound to the memory of a disappointingly okay pastrami sandwich I ordered at the time or to bring it full circle pleasant memory of sitting with my friend and eating a burrito, not over a sink, but on the hood of his sister’s car talking about believe it or not, eating burritos. It was a really good burrito.


This will all get sorted out eventually, the important issues do, so I will try to not over think - this anyway. Especially tonight, Valentine’s Day treat, I get dinner companionship and even though we are going out (chicken wings & tatertots, kind of an anti-fine dining Romance Industrial Complex protest), I am grateful enough that I promise to be good, attentive, pleasant and use a wetnap.

Happy Valentines Day.