nobody has ever written about eating alone before so i figured i should

I always have trouble with the widely held idea that cooking is a calming activity. I believe you people when you say it is meditative and I guess I find chopping vegetables meditative but then what about when you’re done chopping them, and all the corner bits have flung themselves about your counter, and now you have shrapnel to deal with, because you’re really trying to “clean as you go” these days? Occasionally cooking calms me down but it often causes me anxiety and it usually is just a place for me to funnel nervous energy and a rickety attention span. It diffuses, let’s say, more than it calms. When I am done I am rarely like ahhhhh like those ladies in the yogurt commercials. I am more like whew there are many dishes to do and I have stepped on a number of lentils! I should wipe those off before I get in bed.

I do enjoy cooking, I just enjoy it on varying levels at varying times. Sometimes I just like thinking about it, sometimes I like identifying with it, sometimes I like it while it’s happening, sometimes I like it before or after it happens, sometimes I like doing it for or with other people but not as much by myself. It's like having a crush, people think it's fun but really it's miserable. So much of cooking for me has been learning how to be alone: how to clean up after myself, how to care for myself or allow indulgences, how to refine skills and develop tastes, how to decide what I want and how I like to spend my time. There’s this line in my favorite poem that goes “I’ve been lonely for years but never minutes. That’s why I’m so terrible at it, that’s why I keep needing to be rescued.” I am so well versed in being on my own and so tripped up by the intricacies of it all the time, still. This isn’t meant to be sad! This is just what it’s like to be a person.

I have the same volume of thoughts about the actual eating of food: for the past, oh, five or six years of my life I’ve eaten maybe 80% of my dinners alone? (we’re guesstimating here!) and I spend a lot of time thinking about what I should do while I eat. There’s a certain philosophy that says you should cast away all electronic stimuli and, I don’t know, commune with your food, stare off into space, savor each bite, take a moment of respite from the craziness of your day! I remember seeing the book Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life by Thich Nhat Hanh on a bookshelf my senior year of college and thinking, ah, yes, this is an ideal I will achieve some day! Usually I just shovel and fret.

You can read a book, but then there is the need to hold pages down, or turn them, and the concentration required to read particularly if you have ADD means you’ve really got to take some time between bites which I don’t do. I’ll often just scroll through something on my phone but that makes me feel bad about myself and my habits; podcasts are nice but then what do you do with your eyes? You realize that watching a TV while you eat is actually quite a pleasant and logical experience, if you don’t have someone to talk to. I’m bad at watching things on my computer but I came up with the most obnoxious idea the other night when I was thinking about how I’m not cultured, don’t have a rich inner life, and did not study the liberal arts. I found a gallery of paintings to scroll through (okay, I googled “Cy Twombly” because I keep thinking about how he and Sally Mann are such good buddies), set my feet on our coffee table and computer on my shins, and clicked, and ate.

ferragosto IV, 1961 // cy twombly

I wholeheartedly recommend this as a while-eating activity, if you don’t have a TV or you have weird guilt about “personal betterment.” Another good one to scroll through is this thread of ocean-y paintings. You can just sort of plod along through images and sink into them and dwell or not. Your brain and your eyes have something to do while your mouth does its work, but they don’t have to exert too much, and anyways you’re not looking at Twitter, so good job. If you find any other good things to scroll through, send them my way and we can make a little list. And (and and and) if you need a peppy song to get you through dish-doing, may I recommend this, the song of every summer.

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Here are a few good things I’ve been putting in my mouth:

Okay, infused waters! You can block me at this point if you’d like, but please don't! I’d always heard of other people who stored…..tap water…..in the fridge? And it seemed very reasonable but not something I’d ever have my life together enough to do. But then it was hot and I remembered I have this cute milk bottle that I never returned for the deposit so I’ve been stuffing it with cucumbers and lemons and mint and filling it with water and chilling it in the fridge, and yes it does make me feel like I’m at a fancy spa when I drink it. It is hugely refreshing. (When my mom drinks something refreshing she makes this exaggerated "ah....chachachacha" noise, do you have a refreshment noise that YOU make?) You can refill and refill and refill it with water for, like, four days? That’s when things will start to taste weird, and you should swap out your plant matter. This technique is particularly valuable if your ice cubes always get “freezer taste.” Ew!
 

Lovage lovagelovagelovagelovage lovage! It is…..an herb? It’s an herb. If you find it at the farmers market (i’m not sure where else you’d find it?) there will likely be a cute little sign that says “LOVAGE: like celery and parsley had a baby!” and honestly, there’s not much more to say on the flavor front here, because that is just what it’s like. It’s extremely, extremely good in pasta—I like it in this guy*, with or without the asparagus; chop it roughly and add it in about three minutes before you’re done cooking so it has a chance to soften. Its flavor is shockingly lemony when cooked, and does well slouched down by butter, as many good things do. It’s also very good in salads, because my favorite way to make a salad iNtErEsTinG is to just throw a heck-ton of herbs in there. Chopped mint/basil/lovage is a nice combo, and I recently mixed them with some charred bitter greens and raw bitter greens and boiled eggs and it was real nice. Wow! Everything is Nice and Good today, huh?

If you live in the NYC area, buy the Salvatore Bkln smoked ricotta because it’s perfect and deeply smoky but not in the gross way, somehow sweeter than the regular stuff, and many thanks to C Drucks for introducing me to it. Put it on that lovage pasta :)

PIE. It has taken me roughly four years to figure out how to make pie and I owe my ultimate success to local angel Ben Mims, whose peach pie I made on Fourth of July and everyone asked if I bought it from somewhere and I got to be like lol, no, my sweets, I made it with these perfectly manicured hands, thank you. Read over his technique a few times—it will save you from a gummy or chewy crust.

Also, it should be said that: Campaign Zero is a great resource if you're looking to do something regarding the state of police violence in our country; head to their website to learn more about what you can do, and contact your local representitives and ask them to take action. It's a small but important thing! Additionally, I found this Ally Toolkit, made by Larissa, to be helpful and thorough and kind.

Also also: Here is something I wrote about making those ridiculous Black Tap Milkshakes at home, and here is a ranking I made of all the Ben & Jerry's flavors. Please take me seriously as a writer!

xoxo and please wear sunscreen,
m

*I earnestly love how “early Food52” this photo is! My heart!