I was a bit baffled, maybe two or three years ago, when someone heard that I lived alone (and alone at the time meant a single in a dorm room where I shared a bathroom with three other people) and said "wow, I'm so sorry." I kind of stared at her – come again? But I've come to realize that a lot of people really do view living alone as a bad thing, a sad thing, a thing to take pity on. That blows my mind. For me, living alone is absolutely joyous! Anytime I consider doing something that involves spending a night or two (or longer) with a roommate, I cringe a little. I feel like after all these years, I've earned the right to be alone.
Now, that may seem a little odd once you hear my background. After all, I didn't exactly grow up with a house full to the bursting that I needed to escape. My parents were typical baby boomers, my Daddy with two brothers and his parents making your typical American Storybook Family of Five and my mother with her brother and two sisters. I was born in the eighties, and they were into the whole zero population growth concept (as am I), and so for eight years we were a family of three, and then once they divorced we became two families of two, so to speak, though my parents remain best friends to this day and we still do holidays together.
Clearly, I wasn't lacking in alone time. I used to spend weekends with Daddy, and for a big chunk of my childhood and teenage years he was a very quiet person. We had great conversations, but we also spent a lot of time together, but silent, staring at the walls and lost in thought. When I was about fifteen I went on a trip to DC with a high school club, eight of us in a fifteen passenger van so that two could sit on either side of a bench seat and spread their legs across the middle. The group of us became intimate friends for the space of the six hour drive back to Raleigh, as happens on late night van trips, and we started asking each other the ultimate secret question – what do you think about when you're alone? I started into a monologue about how I imagine new lives for myself and what I do and who I'm with and where I go, and then realised everyone was staring at me. I suppose it isn't normal to have such a well-developed relationship with yourself.
Though I had plenty of chances to be alone as a teenager, most of these were alone with one other person in the house – alone but not alone. There was something thrilling, at first, about traveling by myself when I got old enough. By now I yearn for a friend on airplane trips, instead of the inevitably weird seatmate, and it's a bit depressing sometimes when you arrive at the airport and walk by all the hugging and kissing people and straight for the taxi queue. But even though this is clearly a world meant for groups, couples, friends, and family, I still like being alone.
When I lived in Ireland, I went on a weeklong trip to the south of France. I had lived before in Montpellier, and so I went back, along with my housemate who wanted to visit a friend who was studying abroad in the city, but from there I trekked on, doing my own little three-day tour of the southwest. It was the ultimate in indulgence. Not that I spent a ton of money, but I definitely did what I wanted to do. I ate when I wanted to eat, I saw the things I wanted to see, I had an extra glass of wine and didn't feel guilty. When I returned to Montpellier the night before my flight back, I walked through the city square at sunset, munching on my cheese and herb gauffre and feeling utterly at peace. Street food, I think, is made for single people. (I took this picture, incidentally, after I got back to the hotel, showered, and got ready for bed. Only alone could you pull off eating your second gauffre, slathered in Nutella, in bed, and then going to sleep at eight pm just because you feel like it. The first picture was taken that morning in the Bordeaux train station. Another single person indulgence is eating two pastries for breakfast because you can't pick just one.)I should point out that being alone to me isn't just being single. I'd be fine having a girlfriend or a partner or whatever the politically correct term is these days, but I wouldn't want her living here. When I was a teenager, my mom said that if she remarried she'd want to live in separate houses and I thought she was insane. Now, I completely agree. There's something about having your very own space that is absolutely marvelous, even if you aren't doing much with it.
So that brings me to what was ostensibly to be my topic – cooking and eating alone. Reading this book, I'm appalled by some of what people eat when they're on their own. I don't think I ever really thought about it before, but now I realize that my mom has really good taste. Before I went to college I was familiar with couscous, pierogis, knishes, falafel, and several types of fancy cheeses. Daddy is big on fresh vegetables and balanced meals, so Saturday suppers were simple but always delicious. When I come home, I literally salivate when I start thinking about how I'm going to get to have tofu lasagne and kale for supper. Really. When I was a kid, I had a lot of friends who ate EZ Mac and Spaghetti-Os, and I wondered if their parents were taking care of them. I felt a certain amount of pity. Reading about adults who really enjoy eating that kind of thing makes me wonder. I know I sound like a snob, but it isn't that I'm eating gourmet meals all the time. I have a lot of different ways to make simple pasta and casseroles. It's just… Spaghetti-Os? Really?
When I'm alone, I like to eat a variety of things. In the summer, I do spinach salad a lot with a fruit, a nut, a cheese, and a dressing. I tend to really cook one or two big dishes a week and then eat them for the next meals (another benefit to living alone). If I'm in a hurry, I'll make the world's easiest quesedilla (dump cheese on tortilla, fold, toaster oven, add sour cream and salsa). Most of my guilty pleasures are store bought – ice cream, mozzarella sticks or fried mushrooms, and lots and lots of chocolate. Also, I love to bake, but it takes a long time to eat a whole cake.Obviously, this blog has made me experiment more, but I love it. Living with my mom, I couldn't wait for the chance to buy what I wanted and try all the recipes in the cookbooks I used to read for fun. The sad thing is that I'll never get through the thousands of recipes I have typed up in a file, but it's a lot of fun trying.
On a final note, though, I realize perhaps the greatest pleasure these days in eating alone is that no one's watching. Friday night I went with a friend to my favourite Chinese delivery joint. I've never actually been there in person, and I realised there are a number of downsides. When you get ten cream cheese wontons, if you're in a restaurant, you'll eat all ten. You'll never be able to wait for the box to come. You'll be a little embarrassed when the waitress arrives to bring extra plates and you're sitting there with a pancake in one hand, shoveling moo shoo vegetables onto it with gusto. You'll be a little more embarrassed when your friend sees how long it takes you to calculate a twenty percent tip in your head. There's just something wonderful about sitting in your own kitchen, by yourself, eating your food however you want to. Alone in the kitchen with an eggplant, frankly, sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
(Pictured: some favourite alone foods)
