Eating Alone

          Eating is communal. When the priest gives the congregation bread and wine, the ritual is called communion. When two people go on a date, they often head for a restaurant. When families eat together, they at least have a chance to talk with each other. Having to eat alone, it seems, is as pitiful as having to sleep under a bridge.

          But as one who often eats alone, I see its advantages.

          Without the distractions of another person, for instance, I can do justice to the art of eating. The aesthetic experience intensifies as I concentrate on the separately identifiable smells, the combinations of tastes, and the complementary textures of the food. Without the necessity of conversation, I am free to pay attention to the gustatory value of my tahini-thickened spaghetti sauce

or to let my taste buds search for the subtle addition of walnuts in the stir-fry.

Stir-fry with walnuts

          On the other hand, for everyday meals, when it's not necessary to concentrate on the food, the best advantage of eating alone is to be able to read while eating. David Quammen joined me last month for many dinners with his gripping tale of extinctions in The Song of the Dodo. I recently laughed and ate my way through The Moor's Last Sigh, and I hardly knew what I was eating last week as I hung on the icy edge of the top of the world with Jon Krakauer. Jean Valjean, Cosette, and Marius accompanied me through many meals before I finally finished Les Misérables.

          Eating alone allows experimentation a la cuisine. Although it may not seem worth the trouble to cook a fine meal except to impress someone else, there's nothing wrong with impressing oneself. "Great clam linguine, Diana!"

Lingune with clam sauce

It's good for the self-esteem. Besides, it's better to have those kitchen failures in the absence of other witnesses. I try to cook at least one fine meal a week not only to test recipes I might later use at a dinner party, but just to eat well. Why should I deprive myself of those yummy-sounding recipes just because I dine alone?

          The opposite advantage also applies: one doesn't have to fix a good dinner every night. If I want to bake a potato and call it dinner, I can. Unlike my mother, who had to consider the likes and dislikes of a family of seven, I can let my tastes alone dictate my menu. My mother used to say, if I complained I didn't like what she was fixing for dinner, "You're not the only fish in the sea." Sometimes there's an advantage to being the only fish in the sea.

          When I eat alone, I can eat not only whatever I want and whenever I want, but also wherever I want. I don't have a real table in my tiny house, so when I have guests, I set up the card table in the living room, but, alone, I usually eat on the built-in couch with my plate balanced on one knee and my book on the other. It's my favorite place to eat.

          Finally, eating alone allows me to do all sorts of things I would never do in the presence of others. I can be piggish without shame. I can snack while I cook. I can lick my plate if I want to, and I can eat soup from a coconut shell, as I do.

          In her essay about eating alone, M. F. K. Fishner tells the story of Lucullus, who, tired of company, asked to dine alone. Somehow, though, the food wasn't quite right, and when he complained, the cook told him he had thought it wasn't necessary to go to all the trouble of the excellence of important meals of state, since Lucullus was dining alone, to which Lucullus replied that this particular dinner was especially important because tonight, he said, "Lucullous dines with Lucullus." Ad so it is when no one else is present for dinner: we dine not alone but with ourselves and enjoy the company as well as the food.

Next week: "Lunch with Chelsea and Jasmine"

Recipes from this post

     Tahini-thickened spaghetti sauce

     Stir-fry with walnuts

     Clam linguine

TAHINI-TICKENED SPAGHETTI SAUCE

serves 4

Ingredients

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

2 cans whole tomatoes

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon oregano

1/2 teaspoon salt

Black pepper to taste

(Cayenne if desired)

1/2 cup tahini

1/4 cup parsley, chopped

1/4 cup black olives

Preparation

Chop the onion and parsley. Mince the garlic.

To make

Sauté the onion and garlic in olive oil till onion is translucent. Add tomatoes, bay leaf, oregano, and salt and pepper. Bring this mixture to a boil, and let it simmer 45 minutes. Put tahini in a small bowl and gradually add some of the hot sauce, stirring to blend well. When the tahini is thinned and warmed and has no lumps, add it to the sauce and cook for another 10-15 minutes. Add parsley and olives and serve over spaghetti or some other pasta. 

(Note: I was vegetarian at the time of this essay, but now I like to add ground beef. Brown the beef first. Remove it from the skillet or pan while you prepare the sauce as directed here, adding the beef when you're ready to simmer the sauce for 45 minutes.)

STIR-FRY WITH WALNUTS
serves as many as you like, depending on how many vegetables you use

Ingredients

Olive oil

Onions

Garlic

Mushrooms

Seasonal vegetables (anything goes)

Herbs to taste

Tamari

Ginger (Optional. Well, everything is pretty optional.)

1-2 tablespoons cornstarch

2 tablespoons water

Broth, wine, cream, or another thin liquid

Walnuts

Preparation

Chop the vegetables. Carrots and celery should be cut on the diagonal. Onions can be chopped or diced as coarsely as desired. Broccoli stems should be peeled and cut into rounds; florets should be broken into reasonable-size pieces.

Cauliflower florets should be in pieces of similar size. Cabbage and similar vegetables could be chopped or sliced or coarsely shredded or, in the case of kale, chard, etc., sliced. Brush the dirt off the mushrooms and slice them. Grate the ginger. Use walnut halves.
To make
Put a reasonable amount of olive oil (according to taste and diet) in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat. Sauté the onions and garlic first. After that, the order of the vegetables depends on what kind you are using. The rule of thumb is to add first the vegetables that take longest to cook, sauté them to the partially cooked stage, and then add the next vegetable. Mushrooms go after onions and garlic. Carrots, celery, broccoli, and cauliflower might go next. Quick cookers, like greens, go last. The idea is to cook everything (except the onions, garlic, and mushrooms) only till crisp-tender, enhancing the flavor by cooking but not destroying it by leaching it out by overcooking. If your timing is off, the first vegetables cook to a mush before the last vegetables cook done. Experiment. Add tamari to salt the vegetables and grated zest of ginger if you like, as well as other herbs. To make a sauce, dissolve the cornstarch in 2 tablespoons of water and add it to the cooking vegetables, stirring well. The juices from the vegetables should make just enough sauce to coat the vegetables, but if you want a more substantial sauce, add broth or wine. Some grated ginger gives piquancy. Just before serving, but in time to let them heat up, add the walnuts.


CLAM LINGUINE

serves 2
(Recipe from my good friends, Joel and Carol Lieberman, in Portland, Oregon)

Ingredients
2-3 cloves garlic
Sliced mushrooms
1 can minced clams, washed well
Black olives
Salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne
White wine
Fresh basil
Parmesan cheese
Linguine, cooked al dente

To make
Using lots of olive oil, sauté the garlic, mushrooms, clams, and olives, in that order (or not). Add white wine at the end and basil at any time. Serve on cooked linguine. Top with parmesan.