I’m reading Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, it’s about cooking and eating for one and it just reminds me of all the things I want to eat. I have scribbled notes on my bookmark in green gel pen.  Make Lyn’s Chicken Cacciatore.  Find a Trader Joe’s recipe for Butternut Squash Soup.  It’s the second time I’ve read how good that soup is, but alas no TJ’s in Halifax.  And find a mix for something I can’t read in my awful handwriting. 

 I also have the corners of pages folded over to bring me back to the recipe for Cathy’s Salsa. It’s made with canned tomatoes which sounds perfect for January when my last fresh tomatoes resembled red cardboard from Santa.  Also the recipe for Grill-Curried Shrimp Quesarito with Avacado Raita.  It looks easier to make than it sounds, which is what I’m all about. 

I’m liking the book becuase it’s voyeuristic and entertaining to read what people eat when they’re alone.  I can relate to Ann Patchett who said she sometimes goes from white cheese and salsa on saltines right through to a dessert of butter and jam on saltines even though I can’t remember when I’ve last had a saltine.  I used to love making PB & honey saltine sandwiches when I was a kid.  Crumbly and delicious.  I’ve added saltines to my grocery list to remind myself.

And then there are other writers who talk about eating asparagus every day for 3 months in the spring, anchovies *on* everything and eggplant *in* everything.  Those pages are not folded over.

One of the few meals I regularly eat by myself is my post-yoga class dinner at 8:30 pm.  My favourite is rice crackers with slices of cheese and garlicy dill pickles.  Often with a beer. 

The question I ask myself is - do food books written by foodies make me eat more or just eat better?

This first came up when I read French Woman Don’t Get Fat.  She’s all about the quality and not quantity and enjoy what you eat and then WALK AWAY.  And even though I didn’t get a thing from her recipes (Leek soup?  bluck) I buy the philosophy.  So much so that I finished the book, went to Pete’s Frootique and bought $50 worth of foodie foods.  I don’t remember what I bought besides some weird and expensive cheese. But did I find it all so satisfying that I ate less and ate more mindfully?  Or did I eat more because I had 50 bucks worth of tasty food in the house?   I remember it not being as good as I’d hoped.  But I probably just didn’t get the right things.  I’ll have to try that experiment again.

But “Alone” is really about self-care and fulfillment.  Do you just fill the hole in your belly by standing in the kitchen eating cold refried beans from a can, or do you fulfill yourself with a decent meal at a table?  Do you eat alone in a restaurant to be nurtured and entertained?  Or do you skulk in a corner inhaling your food and then slink out as quickly as you can?

My favourite restaurants for eating alone are sushi places.  I love to sit at the bar and watch the chefs make my dinner.  A table is fun too, heck I’d eat decent sushi sitting on a garbage can in an alley. I usually throw whole piece of sushi in my mouth at a time because who wants to denigrate a nice piece of tuna by gnawing through it only to have the rice block break in half and drop into your bowl splashing you with wasabi-speckled soy sauce?  So because of that, dinner conversation over sushi is a little hit and miss with me. 

I remember once being taken to a schmooze lunch by an ad exec and I got to pick the restaurant so I picked sushi of course.  She was cute and blond and picked away daintily at her beef terriaki.  She managed to always ask me a question just as I popped a big piece of delicious sushi in my mouth.  Then she’d pretend not to look at me with mild horror as I chewed happily away, cheeks bulging with fresh raw salmon while the question hung in the air like steam from my tea cup.

But back to self-care, I loved this bit from ”Alone” from Jamie Attenberg:

But there is nothing that 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.