Best. Breakup. Ever.
First things first: The landlady situation turned out to be a non-event. Not knowing what to expect, and harboring the strong suspicion that said person was intending a sneak property inspection, K and I rolled out of bed at the crack of mid-morning and cleaned our hearts out (typed "butts off"; that really didn't work) for the next four hours. When the knock came at 2 (knock, not call: I was correct), our gruff landlady was welcomed into our gracious, airy, gleaming parlor. (I was also correct in guessing she'd be too polite to do any more than steal a furtive peek at the other rooms, and thank god for that.) She seemed impressed, implored me to give her maximum notice about my onward assignment timetable, and left with nary a word about rent increases. Considering I'd spent most of the previous night fretting about how to mount a blitz-apartment(house?)-search-and-move, I collapsed into a little heap the second the door closed behind her, and directly into a deep sleep.
But, anyway, that's not the main point.
The main point is that I love not having a boyfriend but having someone here with whom to talk and do lots of fun stuff and all of the cooking and some of the household upkeep. This is like having all the best parts of a relationship without any of the hard work or dreary "but where is this going?" conversations. Alas, I know it can't last. Men. Why do they always have to be going on about marriage?
And, oh, the food. I really, really appreciate good meals. I mean, to the point where I consider it a serious compensation of my otherwise problematically itinerant lifestyle that I get to sample the exotic fresh fruit and veg of the world. And I could probably recite, without hesitation, my top ten gustatory experiences of the past eight years.
But, I also consider cooking to be one of the most boring activities in the universe. Beyond that, I know that my own kitchen skills are so rudimentary, if not downright dangerous, that merely contemplating the amount of effort I'd have to put in to achieve the very bottom of the passability scale defeats me before I begin. Plus...well, I'm not proud of this, but it's true that despite my appreciation for culinary excellence, I can end up in the mindset, especially if busy or focused on something else, in which I eat rice and beans every night for several months on end without particularly noticing. Which, yes, is pretty much what I've been doing. On the bright side, I did lose more than a dozen pounds without really trying, simply through the indignity of having to eat my own cooking for so long.
So, you can imagine what a revelation K's gnocchi di zucca in a vodka cream sauce has been. The man is simply talented: for god's sake, he once reconstructed an amazingly authentic Burmese khao soi, without ever having tasted one, with no other tools than some Thai spices and his deft interrogation of my memories. Even last night's simple Sunday meal of breaded veg cutlet embellished with gruyere, with buttery greens and potatoes was like crack for the taste buds. The second I finished, my brain desperately tried to persuade me to take a second helping equal to the first. And yes, I can feel the fat cells flocking back, scoping out my hips, looking for the best place to settle down and raise a family, and I don't care.
Look, I'm not dumb, even if all that satiety-induced dopamine sloshing around in my brain does dull the critical faculties a bit: I know we're both on our best behavior right now, and it does make me reluctant to plan beyond the period after which we'll lapse back into our old horrible habits. Of course, what I don't know is when, exactly, that will occur. But, heck, I'm perfectly happy to wait (and wait...and wait) in this label-less, luxurious, limbo, and see.
But, anyway, that's not the main point.
The main point is that I love not having a boyfriend but having someone here with whom to talk and do lots of fun stuff and all of the cooking and some of the household upkeep. This is like having all the best parts of a relationship without any of the hard work or dreary "but where is this going?" conversations. Alas, I know it can't last. Men. Why do they always have to be going on about marriage?
And, oh, the food. I really, really appreciate good meals. I mean, to the point where I consider it a serious compensation of my otherwise problematically itinerant lifestyle that I get to sample the exotic fresh fruit and veg of the world. And I could probably recite, without hesitation, my top ten gustatory experiences of the past eight years.
But, I also consider cooking to be one of the most boring activities in the universe. Beyond that, I know that my own kitchen skills are so rudimentary, if not downright dangerous, that merely contemplating the amount of effort I'd have to put in to achieve the very bottom of the passability scale defeats me before I begin. Plus...well, I'm not proud of this, but it's true that despite my appreciation for culinary excellence, I can end up in the mindset, especially if busy or focused on something else, in which I eat rice and beans every night for several months on end without particularly noticing. Which, yes, is pretty much what I've been doing. On the bright side, I did lose more than a dozen pounds without really trying, simply through the indignity of having to eat my own cooking for so long.
So, you can imagine what a revelation K's gnocchi di zucca in a vodka cream sauce has been. The man is simply talented: for god's sake, he once reconstructed an amazingly authentic Burmese khao soi, without ever having tasted one, with no other tools than some Thai spices and his deft interrogation of my memories. Even last night's simple Sunday meal of breaded veg cutlet embellished with gruyere, with buttery greens and potatoes was like crack for the taste buds. The second I finished, my brain desperately tried to persuade me to take a second helping equal to the first. And yes, I can feel the fat cells flocking back, scoping out my hips, looking for the best place to settle down and raise a family, and I don't care.
Look, I'm not dumb, even if all that satiety-induced dopamine sloshing around in my brain does dull the critical faculties a bit: I know we're both on our best behavior right now, and it does make me reluctant to plan beyond the period after which we'll lapse back into our old horrible habits. Of course, what I don't know is when, exactly, that will occur. But, heck, I'm perfectly happy to wait (and wait...and wait) in this label-less, luxurious, limbo, and see.
2 Comments:
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Anonymous said...
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- 7:05 AM
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esquiver said...
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- 11:07 PM
Post a CommentYay on all counts: biopsy, landlady, your current living situation.
I'm reading a proof copy of "How to Cook Without Recipes"; as you can imagine, I am a slave to recipes, whereas the Italian approaches cooking more like K. does. I'm not sure whether it will ever be available in the U.S., but it's interesting because it acknowledges that cooking has a substantial scientific component, but it dispenses with the idea that it must be so formulaic.
The good thing is that it talks about some of this science in a practical way. For example, I now know what is meant by "season to taste". If the whole book turns out to be as good as the first few chapters, I'll let you know, on the off-chance that you ever cook for yourself again.
Of course, it doesn't hurt to be a ten-minute walk from London's finest Indian spice shop ... exotic and cheap. McCormick's should be ashamed.
Thanks. Sounds like an interesting book. I doubt it has a scientific approach to removing cooking-associated tedium, however.
And, yes, I'm happy/grateful for a good outcome on most of my recent issues. Still have the ecru hair, however, which only succeeded in getting very unevenly blonde with another coat and is now too fried to experiment with further.
K likes it, though, and says the still-silver parts look "sun-kissed." I think for that to be true the sunlight would have to be coming from a spot about two feet lower than the back of my head. Very fortunately, for the moment -- and, surely, this can't last -- K does indeed seem to think the sun shines from there.
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