Thursday, December 28, 2006
Fodder And Fare
Watch the positions a child wriggles into to protest the dead minutes after dinner, when the adults are sipping bitter cups of coffee and twirling their wine stems on the tablecloth and talking endlessly about the things adults talk about. The cake is in the kitchen. It's been in there all day, perfect and composed in the hour of its execution, waiting to be cracked and wrecked like a piggy bank. And the adults talk on and on as their food settles. What are they talking about? Don't they know there is cake?
I take my meals over sinks, out of refrigerators, at my desk. People stop in my doorway and I answer their questions with bun spackle in my molars, mustard in the corner of my mouth. I've spent my life stealing away in dogged pursuit of quick, chip-dip-based meals: a knife and a hunk of cheese, summer sausage, a baseball game on the TV. It's too expensive to cook for one, too depressing, too.
One day a dozen years ago my brother and I took my Yiayia to a chain restaurant called Bill Knapp's. She ordered potato soup, and when the waiter returned to our table to check on us, she asked him in her thick Greek accent if he would tell the chef that he's using too much starch in the soup. "Well, actually," replied the waiter, "there is no chef. All the food, like, comes in bags. From a factory."
My Yiayia was no dullard; she snorted a good-natured laugh, both at the absurdity of the situation as well as her own naiveté. She spent her life cooking at home and in restaurants, great rich ancient dishes made from scratch. But she also liked pizza and beer and hamburgers. She told us nostalgic stories about growing up in the hills of Sparta, but she loved America and all of its first-world innovations. The generational seams are paved smooth with heavy creams and sauces.
The Jetsons ate pills for dinner but the family still ate together. It was fiction. The real future of food is shot up into space: gelatinous sauces rolled in plastic tubing, energy bars. Solitary foods. Manufactured sustenance is buried beneath shiny packaging in the supermarket aisles. A meal is a pint of ice cream, a frozen pizza, more cardboard than calories.
The condos on my street pop up like cardboard constructions in children’s books. Their front windows run the length of their living quarters, showing off the way we live: overstuffed couches and plasma television presided over by a great big marble kitchen. But there's no dining room, no table, no space to insulate oneself from the advertisements on television.
If I weren’t a coward I’d buy a dining room table and make friends over slow meals lubricated with alcohol. We would sit around the table for hours while we told stories and submit complaints. We would celebrate Thanksgiving in February, September, June. Everyone would bring a side dish and we’d all compliment each other and leave with reluctance. But we wouldn’t overeat, we wouldn’t feel greedy, because there would be no question that we’d soon come together to celebrate another Thanksgiving together.
I take my meals over sinks, out of refrigerators, at my desk. People stop in my doorway and I answer their questions with bun spackle in my molars, mustard in the corner of my mouth. I've spent my life stealing away in dogged pursuit of quick, chip-dip-based meals: a knife and a hunk of cheese, summer sausage, a baseball game on the TV. It's too expensive to cook for one, too depressing, too.
One day a dozen years ago my brother and I took my Yiayia to a chain restaurant called Bill Knapp's. She ordered potato soup, and when the waiter returned to our table to check on us, she asked him in her thick Greek accent if he would tell the chef that he's using too much starch in the soup. "Well, actually," replied the waiter, "there is no chef. All the food, like, comes in bags. From a factory."
My Yiayia was no dullard; she snorted a good-natured laugh, both at the absurdity of the situation as well as her own naiveté. She spent her life cooking at home and in restaurants, great rich ancient dishes made from scratch. But she also liked pizza and beer and hamburgers. She told us nostalgic stories about growing up in the hills of Sparta, but she loved America and all of its first-world innovations. The generational seams are paved smooth with heavy creams and sauces.
The Jetsons ate pills for dinner but the family still ate together. It was fiction. The real future of food is shot up into space: gelatinous sauces rolled in plastic tubing, energy bars. Solitary foods. Manufactured sustenance is buried beneath shiny packaging in the supermarket aisles. A meal is a pint of ice cream, a frozen pizza, more cardboard than calories.
The condos on my street pop up like cardboard constructions in children’s books. Their front windows run the length of their living quarters, showing off the way we live: overstuffed couches and plasma television presided over by a great big marble kitchen. But there's no dining room, no table, no space to insulate oneself from the advertisements on television.
If I weren’t a coward I’d buy a dining room table and make friends over slow meals lubricated with alcohol. We would sit around the table for hours while we told stories and submit complaints. We would celebrate Thanksgiving in February, September, June. Everyone would bring a side dish and we’d all compliment each other and leave with reluctance. But we wouldn’t overeat, we wouldn’t feel greedy, because there would be no question that we’d soon come together to celebrate another Thanksgiving together.
