Dinner alone is one of life’s pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam.
~ Laurie Colwin, ‘Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant’ in Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone
Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone is a collection of essays about dining alone and I’ve sieved out excerpts from the book in the past few entries to give you an idea of what the book is about. Some of the writers revel in having only themselves for company as it’s the only time they get to have me-time amidst having to juggle the demands of family life. Others find the act of eating alone utterly depressing. Some relate dining alone to memorable times of life like living on their own for the first time or going off to college. The book’s an easy and quick read and goes down easily on the literary palate.
For this blog entry, I’ll write my own thoughts about dining alone. I can’t say I like dining alone all the time because I associate food with social activity. I like dining with family and friends where there is conversation over the table, where you catch up on what happened during the day or what’s happening in one another’s lives.
At work, I like dining with colleagues. I think having lunch alone is depressing. I find that it’s very different in Singapore compared to London. In Singapore, locals like to have lunch together in the workplace. To not partake in this lunch time gathering would seem very anti-social. And really, it’s during lunch time that all the office gossip come spilling out. So to be in the know, one must eat with colleagues. Haha. To know all the office gossip, I’ve discovered that the best person to befriend is the office receptionist.
Anyway, in London, I found that many people like to eat in or at their desk. Maybe it’s just some angmoh thing. Apart from the times I travel alone and lived in London, I seldom find myself dining alone.
However I do sometimes enjoy times when I have the flat all to myself and I sit in front of the TV and veg out. My secret junk food indulgence is Nissin cup noodles which doesn’t contain an ounce of nutrition. I like the chicken flavour and chicken & mushroom flavour. I’d crack an egg into the cup before pouring the hot water into it. But oh, before all that, I’d also pick out the yellow foam-like bits which are supposed to be egg. But I hate it ‘cos it tastes like foam/sponge. So I pick it out with a pair of chopsticks first. After three minutes, I take my cup noodles and sit in front of the TV and watch whatever takes my fancy – usually not much ‘cos the state of TV these days is dismal. But I watch it nonetheless ‘cos usually at that point I don’t want to think.
And if I cook for myself, I do simple stir-fry and can cook everything in one pot sometimes. I remember how I used to cook rice in a pot in London (‘cos I didn’t have a rice cooker) and what I would do is to add the pieces of meat – usually chicken – and the sauce and vegetables into the pot together with seasoning and fry everything. And voila, I get fried rice for dinner. Then for dessert I’d make green bean soup for myself. Other times I’d buy fresh pasta and cook that for dinner and pair it with raw baby spinach for the requisite greens. Another time I made Japanese curry for myself. I’m a lazy cook so I always go for the easiest dishes! 🙂
So anyway, what is your ‘Alone Food’?