What We Eat When We Eat Alone - Deborah Madison [45]
Who says, indeed? Breakfast for dinner, and we’re back to eggs, a favorite and for good reason. “Eggs are simple, warm, and fairly quick,” says peach farmer and writer Mas Masamoto. “But they have another function, too. As breakfast foods, they signal the start of something, even if it is mid-morning or the end of the day. I usually write in the very early morning—that’s my first day. Then I work outside—that’s my second day. But when I’m by myself, I start my third day with an omelet dinner, then retire to my desk and start writing again.”
The solo meal we work into our lives, especially if we’re busy with careers and small children, might be something we cobble together once, then go back to again and again. A young woman who’s busy working as a caterer and raising a family always turns to a concoction she calls her fake Thai wrap.
“For this,” she says, after apologizing that it’s not real Thai, “you take peanut butter and spread it over a tortilla, add a big squirt of sriracha sauce, lettuce, bean sprouts, and pile on sliced carrots, basil, and mint.” Hearing this, another woman, whose children are grown, added that her mother always made what she called a Texas summer sandwich, consisting of peanut butter, mayonnaise, tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce on bread. Both these sounded strange to me, but when I cast them as a kind of Thai salad with thick peanut sauce that happens to be served with tortillas or bread instead of a rice paper wrap or slippery noodles, they seemed more plausible. The mayonnaise might be problematic for some, though. Does it really belong with peanut butter? Some say “yes!” My high school French teacher thought it did, on something he called a hotsy-totsy bilala, essentially a peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich. Now that I think about it, this must have been his eat-alone food.
You might assume that women are big salad eaters when they’re alone, and some are. Maureen Callahan makes, and has shared, a beautiful summer salad of bulgur with tomatoes and shrimp; another woman forages in her garden for lettuce, cabbage, mint, purslane, and sorrel, then takes her salad meal to her balcony. Martha Rose, as might be expected for a vegetable-oriented cook, tends to make herself a salad when she gets to eat alone. “But a really nice salad,” she insists, “with endives, a coddled egg, feta, herbs. If I have mushrooms or beets, I add them, too. Or walnuts. Or pine nuts.”
But salads aren’t for everyone. One woman confesses that she avoids having salads, even if they are healthy. Why? “I dislike making salads!” she says. “All that chopping and mixing and then having to craft a dressing; it’s way too much work! For batch days, I go to a sandwich. There’s something supremely satisfying about eating bread. If I can slather onto two slices of bread a great spread—like a roasted pepper–sun-dried tomato–cream cheese spread—and then pile on the veggies, sliced chicken or turkey, and finish it off with tons of lettuce, well, that’s a hugely satisfying meal.” It sounds a little like a salad to me, only stuffed between slices of bread.
Consider sentiment as something that drives a solo menu—cooking in a grandmother’s skillet or making a grandmother’s recipe. “After I first left home,” says Marsha Weiner, “I found myself seeking time alone to make the dinner I had every Tuesday at my grandmother’s house—salmon cakes, egg noodles with sour cream, and a wedge of iceberg lettuce with Russian dressing—you know, the mayonnaise, ketchup, and lemon stuff. I vividly recall my grandmother serving this on the dishes