{"id":1201,"date":"2009-03-07T13:59:37","date_gmt":"2009-03-07T13:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.com\/?p=1201"},"modified":"2009-03-07T13:59:37","modified_gmt":"2009-03-07T13:59:37","slug":"the_lonely_palate_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=1201","title":{"rendered":"The Lonely Palate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s face it: the truth about eating alone, despite our best intentions, is that nine times out of ten we eat badly. We eat inadequate food; we eat it too fast; and we eat it slouched over a computer or sprawled in front of a television, with all the enlightened social skills of seagulls. &#8230; Eating alone is not nature&#8217;s way. Babies never eat alone. They can&#8217;t. Children don&#8217;t, unless they&#8217;re in tragic circumstances. Old people eat alone regularly and it&#8217;s dreadful. No wonder they lose their appetities. My theory (and I have several solo dinners behind me to back it up) is that to compose a happy character, and thus contribute to making the world a nice place to live in, you&#8217;ve either got <i>to be fed<\/i> (that is, by someone <i>other than yourself<\/i> who cares about you), which feels good and means that you&#8217;re part of something larger than yourself; or, you&#8217;ve got <i>to be the person feeding<\/i> (that is, <i>other<\/i> people &#8211; not just dogs! &#8211; that <i>you<\/i> care about). That has the same positive effect.<br \/>\n~ Laura Calder &#8216;The Lonely Palate&#8217; in <i>Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s face it: the truth about eating alone, despite our best intentions, is that nine times out of ten we eat badly. We eat inadequate food; we eat it too fast; and we eat it slouched over a computer or &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=1201\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-literature-writings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}