What We Eat When We Eat Alone - Deborah Madison [77]
The first food he offered me wasn’t exactly seductive either, but it showed me a caring man. At that time I was thinking about marriage, and my mind was already made up about Patrick. He met me at the Little Rock airport with a take-out pizza. My first. The smell of the warm yeasty bread and the melted cheese filled his Astro van as we drove off into the night. The pizza was there in case I got hungry during the long drive to his studio-home in the woods. I was touched that he had even considered that I might be hungry and provided for that possibility.
The second offering came a few days later, on the morning of my departure. I awakened in the pre-dawn darkness to the sight and smell of a plate of slithery fried okra. This was not a food to get or keep me in bed, but I thought that it was a bold and curious move on Patrick’s part. The way I saw it, he wanted me to become acquainted with “his” food. So having fried okra for breakfast was also a way of becoming more deeply acquainted with him. Have we ever fried okra in almost twenty years of marriage? Maybe once. But we’ve been known to order it at truck stops, mostly out of sentiment.
When we met, as is no doubt true with many couples, we didn’t know each other’s foodscape at all. He was a vegetarian. I wanted to stop being one. He was an artist and a Southerner; I was a cook and a Yankee. But over the years we’ve blended many of our tastes. We’ve also flipped food priorities. He is no longer a vegetarian while I regard my forays into carnivorous foods as nearly complete. When I asked him what he’d cook for me now, he gave me a menu that was oddly but truly ours.
“I’d have a bottle of Veuve Cliquot,” he began. “And I’d wear an apron with bold stripes, something kind of French looking, not some dorky woman’s apron or a farmers market apron. I would have prepared homemade pimento cheese, and I’d make panini out of that, cut it up into little wedges for the appetizer to have with the champagne. I would explain the Southern tradition of pimento cheese, and I’d read a poem where a man is behind a woman in traffic. He sees her bumper sticker and it’s offensive to him. So he gets out of his car and goes to her window, but then he finds her very attractive. They wonder if they can ever be friends. I’d write my version of that poem and read it.
“Then I’d open a Ridge Zinfandel, and I’d cook roasted potatoes with salt and grill lamb chops and cook some collards. In summer I’d cook yellow squash on the grill while grilling the chops. That would be dinner.
“Afterward I’d have a salad of limestone lettuce, and then I’d have fancy chocolates and coffee. And I’d read another poem that I’d write for the occasion.”
He even suggested having lots of candles, though he doesn’t care about candlelight for himself. But he knows that women like candles.
“And music,” he adds. “Some impressionistic classical music. Debussy. Poulenc, but not the choral music. Ravel, but not the Bolero, of course. Maybe some chamber music. I’d have to give it some thought.”
This would be a quirky and utterly enjoyable meal, and we would share it with pleasure. I would be amused at the pimento cheese and champagne combination, but know that however unusual, it would be good. We would enjoy every swallow of the Ridge until it was gone. I would smile at his poems, and he’d skip the chocolate. The coffee wouldn’t be decaf. It would be a long and delicious evening.
And this means a lot because sometimes food can go sideways when couples do, and it’s one way you can tell that things maybe aren’t so good at home. When my first husband and I were drifting apart, our cooking for one another was one of the signposts that said the nurture had gone out of our relationship.
“Your food is so subtle,” he would say, clearly meaning