Celeriac & potato mash with watercress salad
Deborah Madison just did a new book, What We Eat When We Eat Alone. The overall conclusion of the book is that when we eat alone, we don’t have to follow the rules – we can eat what and where we want – standing over the sink, in bed, in front of TV, and we don’t have to wait until everyone is seated take a bite. One thing for me that has been changing as I age is that I can wait and eat later now. I used to get so hungry at 4:00 p.m., that I tended to spoil my dinner appetite with a late afternoon snack, usually sugary – but I’ve gotten better at waiting for something good to cook. The book talks a lot about the differences between men & women eating alone, how men will eat cheeseburgers twice a day, and women are more prone to eating crackers and cheese and wine at cocktail hour and skipping dinner or having a bowl of ice cream or a cup of cocoa. The book points out the exceptions, though, an American man living in England who said his solo meal is cottage cheese on a rice cake with cucumber and tomato – sounds like something my mom would’ve eaten happily.
In some Mollie Katzen book she had an advice for solitary diners section, where she says that cheese is a snack, but melted cheese is a meal.
What We Eat… also points out that women do more cooking for others and so don’t feel like going to a lot of trouble just for themselves. I agree with the woman quoted who said that any meal that takes half a day to prepare should be shared, but I do like slow cooking something just for me – like programming the oven to have rice pudding ready when I get home. I do know I have been enjoying keeping my kitchen kind of empty recently and cobbling dinner together with whatever I can find – I like the challenge of making something good from random ingredients. And the sparseness is nice. I also think there’s something about British food that’s comforting – maybe because of the damp climate – they have a lot of foods that seem just right when you come in chilled.
Tuesday I had Brit-inspired, cobbled-together, dinner – mashed celery root (the very last thing from my CSA box, half the knobby root dredged up from the downstairs fridge where it was sitting, lonely in the veg drawer with just an onion to keep it company, wrapped in a plastic bag, and more than half frozen) and potato, with butter and a spoonful of sour cream, with watercress salad on the side. I mixed grainy mustard, rice vinegar, a pinch of sugar, and walnut oil in a bowl then tossed in the washed cress. But maybe it should have been shared, rather than solo – the cress that I didn’t eat wilted and went down the drain; half the celeriac-potato mash is still in a plastic container in the fridge. Hmm, probably be just right, fried up with an egg the next time I come home hungry.
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