Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

It is certainly true that cooking is therapeutic, creative, and all those other faintly creepy self-helpish words. I would love to tell you that learning to cook was part of my journey toward actualization. I would love to tell Oprah this. I would love to tell Oprah this while weeping. But I learned to cook for a much simpler reason: in the abject hope that people would spend time with me if I put good things in their mouths. It is, in other words (like practically everything else I do), a function of my desperation for emotional connection and acclaim.
Que Será Sarito: An (Almost) Foolproof Plan to Never Ever Eat Alone Again by Steve Almond

One time, in graduate school, I lived apart from my boyfriend for eight months, and I was so lonely and it was so awful. I mostly didn't eat, but then when I did, I ate celery dipped in Marshmallow Fluff. Now we're married, and everything is great but he has no idea I still hide a jar of Marshmallow Fluff in my sock drawer! The End.

"A potato," I told my brother, when he asked what I'd eaten for dinner. "Boiled, cubed, sauteed with olive oil, sea salt, and balsamic vinegar."

"That's it?" he asked. He was one to talk. He'd enjoyed what he called "bachelor's taco night" for three dinners and counting.

"A red cabbage, steamed with hot sauce and soy sauce," I said the following night.

"Do you need some money?" he asked.

But it wasn't that, or it wasn't only that. I liked to think of myself not as a student on a budget, but rather as a peasant, a member of a group whose eating habits, across cultures, had long appealed to me.

"Are you full?" my brother asked.

"Full enough," I said.

"What about protein?"

(Introduction)

Eight p.m. and stomachs all across the land are beginning to rumble. Down in the village, women are darting out to buy last-minute baguettes before the shutters on the boulangerie crash shut for the night. The men are drinking aperitifs of cold Chablis at the cafe-bar and chatting in duos and trios and quartets about why the village needs a new well. Any minute now, their coins will clink onto the counter. They'll wrap scarves around their necks and wanter their separate ways through the wood-smoke-scented air, along cobblestone streets, in the final wisps of light, toward home. And there, waiting for them in the warm glow behind the windows, will be more talk and laughter, and no doubt an enormous pot of coq au vin or boeuf bourguignonne or pot au feu, one of those mellow, classic, slowly cooked dishes, the privilege of families and intimate gatherings of loved ones.

Bastards.

(The Lonely Palate, Laura Caulder)

And the kind people -- they are the ones who have made me feel the loneliest. Wherever I have lived, they have indeed been kind -- up to a certain point. They have poured cocktails for me, and praised me generously for things I have written to their liking, and showed me their children. And I have seen the discreetly drawn curtains to the family dining-rooms, so different from the uncluttered, spinsterish emptiness of my own one room. Behind the far door to the kitchen I have sensed, with the mystic materialism of a hungry woman, the presence of honest-to-God fried chops, peas and carrots, a jello salad and lemon meringue pie -- none of which I like and all of which I admire in theory and would give my eyeteeth to be offered. But the kind people always murmur, "We'd love to have you stay to supper sometime. We don't dare, of course, the simple way we eat and all."

As I leave, by myself, two nice plump kind neighbors come in. They say howdo, and then good-by with obvious relief, after a polite, respectful mention of culinary literature as represented, no matter how doubtfully, by me. They sniff the fine creeping straight forward smells in the hall and living-room with silent thanks that they are not condemned to my daily fare of quails financiere, pate de Strasbourg truffe en brioche, sole Marguery, bombe vanilla au Cointreau. They close the door on me.

I drive home by way of the corner Thriftimart to pick up another box of Ry Krisp, which with a can of tomato soup and a glass of California sherry will make a good nourishing meal for me as I sit on my tuffet in a circle of proofs and pocket detective stories.

(A is for Dining Alone by M.F.K. Fisher)

‘A is for Dining Alone’ by M. K. Fisher

‘There are few people alive with whom I care to pray, sleep, dance, sing, or share my bread and wine. Of course, there are times when this latter cannot be avoided if we are to exist socially, but it is endurable only because it need not be the only fashion of self-nourishment.’

‘And the kind people—they are the ones who have made me feel the loneliest. Wherever I have lived, they have indeed been kind—up to a certain point. They have poured cocktails for me and praised me generously for things I have written to their liking, and showed me their children. And I have seen the discreetly drawn curtains to their family dining rooms, so different from the uncluttered, spinsterish emptiness of my own one room. Behind the far door to the kitchen I have sensed, with the mystic materialism of a hungry woman, the presence of honest-to-God fried chops, peas and carrots, a jello salad, and lemon meringue pie—none of which I like and all of which I admire in theory and would give my eyeteeth to be offered. But the kind people always murmur, “We’d love to have you stay to supper sometime. We wouldn’t dare, of course, the simple way we eat and all.”…They close the door on me.’

‘Things tasted good, and it was a relief to be away from my job and from the curious disbelieving impertinence of the people in restaurants. I still wished, in what was almost a theoretical way, that I was not cut off from the world’s trenchermen by what I had written for and about them. But, and there was no cavil here, I felt firmly then, as I do this very minute, that snug misanthropic solitude is better than hit-or-miss congeniality.’


‘Potatoes and Love’ by Nora Ephron

‘Sometimes, when a loved one announces that he has decided to go on a low-carbohydrate, low-fat, low-salt diet (thus ruling out the possibility of potatoes, should you have been so inclined), he is signalling that the middle is ending, and the end is beginning.’

‘In the end, I always want potatoes. Mashed potatoes. Nothing like mashed potatoes when you’re feeling blue. Nothing like getting into bed with a bowl of hot mashed potatoes already loaded with butter, and methodically adding a thin cold slice of butter to every forkful. The problem with mashed potatoes, though, is that they require almost as much hard work as crisp potatoes, and when you’re feeling blue the last thing you feel like is hard work. Of course, you can always get someone to make the mashed potatoes for you, but let’s face it: the reason you’re blue is that there isn’t anyone to make them for you. As a result, most people do not have nearly enough mashed potatoes in their lives, and when they do, it’s almost always at the wrong time.’


‘Thanks, But No Thanks’ by Courtney Eldridge

‘All I’m saying is that we came from completely different worlds, and to be perfectly honest, there was a time that had no small appeal. I was fascinated. I mean, come on—when we started dating, I was working two or three part-time jobs, trying to write, subsisting on a steady diet of Uncle Ben’s, and he was a master sommelier with a degree in restaurant management who’d moved to New York to open his own restaurant. So of course we had very different views on the place and importance of food in our lives, that was a given. What I didn’t know was just how much food could unite or divide two people.’

‘And obviously the pleasure of sitting at the bar is watching those gentlemen prepare your sushi, which is genuine artistry, not to mention a complete turn-on. You know, I’ve often heard Anthony Bourdain bandy the word orgasmic about, and I’d always roll my eyes, thinking, Well, no shit, you’re a man: that’s a given. But still…the chef’s special at Sushi of Gari is a culinary multiple orgasm. That said, I must have had twelve courses—honestly, ten, easy—before I finally said no more, thank you. And the only reason, the only reason I quit was because my husband had, and I didn’t want to look like a complete pig, even though everyone behind the bar knew exactly what the score was. Even so, I could’ve gone all night.’

‘On par with any musical, sexual and/or pharmaceutical awakening…ugh, I cannot imagine skydiving could be more exhilarating. Then again, the bill will certainly bring you back to earth, but anyhow. Sushi was never the same after that. Actually, nothing was the same after that.’


‘Instant Noodles’ by Rattawut Lapcharoensap

‘It is a stock scenario, the abject child eating alone at school, lifeblood of so many sitcoms and young-adult novels. The image’s ubiquity must have something to do with the school canteen’s special status as a primal site of unchecked peer sociality. And so the maligned child fulfils, with each bitter mouthful, her circular, uninvited destiny: she eats alone because she is abject and she is abject because she eats alone. But the tragedy is not eating alone as such—it’s the transformation of the very meaning of eating itself, from a nourishing, comforting, and familial activity to one that is cold, pathological, and solipsistic.’

‘One afternoon, I came across a Chinese grocery on Route 13 that stocked a decent selection of Mama, Yumyum, and Waiwai instant noodles. I nearly wept at the sight of them in their bright and shiny packages, lined up neatly beside their Korean, Chinese, and Japanese counterparts. I had tried several American brands of instant noodles since arriving from Bangkok but found them all inadequate—the broth flavoring had always seemed rather too artificial, the noodles texturally suspicious. Here, then, were my madeleines—material links to a former life—and I remember gathering several packages into my arms as if they were children that I had lost.’

‘The gap between the memory of a good meal and the attempt to re-create it in a foreign country—to make oneself feel, in a sense, more at home—can reinforce rather than eradicate feelings of dislocation and homesickness. This would be the case, I suspect, even if one
managed to re-create a dish in all its subtle, “authentic” aspects, for there are things that one can never re-create on a stove. Because of this ambivalence, immigrants know—perhaps more than most—that though eating can make you full, it can also often feel like fasting.’


‘Protective Measures’ by Jami Attenberg

‘But I knew now that some kind of fullness could be attained by dining out alone. I’ll show you who I am, I thought. I’m the girl who knows how to take care of her own needs since no one else knows how. Or is willing. I returned to that sushi restaurant many times on Friday nights over the next few years. I read a lot of books. I stuffed my face until I couldn’t eat another bite. I was full. I was empty. I was learning how to survive.’

‘For the rest of the trip, I ordered room service and ate in my hotel room. I would wake up in the morning, pick up the phone, and order an omelette or a fresh fruit plate and lots of coffee, please. Then I would smoke a joint from the never-ending bag of pot until the food arrived. Eventually I grew to hate that bag of pot. I was never going to be able to smoke all of it. And strangely, it was making me feel emptier. Halfway through the trip I walked out onto the balcony of my room and emptied it. The green leaves flew into the sea air.’

‘Occasionally I busy myself with falling in and out of love. But nothing quite fills me up like taking care of myself, taking care of my desires. Often the fullness lasts only for a minute, and then like the pain that comes from a pinch of skin, it is gone. But it’s better than not having eaten at all.’