Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant

So there I was the other day at the bookstore, with several hours of glorious time and a big, cushy chair at my disposal. And so I did the only thing possible. I approached the lone store clerk, reshelving books that had been mere escapes for other mortals like me perhaps yesterday or just an hour ago, and asked him in a low, secretive voice, "Do you have Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant?"

His eyes grew wide, thinking perhaps I was suggesting something way more private than the title of a book, and he peered over his glasses to ask cautiously, "Ex . . .cuse . . . me?"

"Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant," I repeated. And then sparing him more embarrassment, I added, "It's a book . . . a collection of essays about eating alone."

"Ohhhhhh," he said, big sigh, big relief, and led me to the food essay section, where all my friends were. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. The Omnivore's Dilemma. Fast Food Nation. The United States of Arugula. Jane and Michael Stern's Two for the Road. And there, poking out its pretty aubergine head, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant.

I curled up on the chair, one leg beneath me, and fell through the rabbit hole to all the kitchens I have ever called home, and the odd, habitual meals I made there. The vanilla yogurt and fat, Rome apple that I ate every single morning in Apartment 18 at 243 East 24th Street in New York, where I lived alone, five flights up, past that cat Frankie with the fangs, the cute reporter from the New York Daily News who rode a bike and caught me throwing out a crumb cake with all the crumbs picked off one night, and Cookie the male nurse who kept that Teach Your Parakeet to Talk album on all day. "Hello. Hello. Hello." The salads that always included boiled brussel sprouts, for some odd reason. The can of tomato soup and loaf of French bread that had to last two weekend meals if I was going to be able to afford those subtitled films I was always desperate to see. I saw My Sweet Little Village, a film from the Czech Republic (from where one set of my grandparents emigrated) at least three times and laughed almost embarrassingly loud each time. Has anyone seen that movie? It must be from 20 years ago.

There was the kitchen in college that slanted, so my omelettes were always fat on one end. And the kitchen where I grew up where I baked cookies almost every single day throughout my teenage years, even making enormous ones for every single person I knew as Christmas presents one year, wrapping them individually, and begging people not to put other presents on top of them under the tree. And that kitchen in Stuyvesant Town in New York where I learned, the hard way, the difference between one clove of garlic and one head of garlic. And the two months I lived in Atlanta with no furniture at all while my fiance finished up things in New York and moved our apartment belongings south. Dinner was usually slivers of Muenster cheese on saltine crackers while watching my poor cat trying to think of new things to do to entertain himself in a completely empty room.

I have never really been alone in the kitchen with an eggplant. Once eggplant entered my cooking repertoire, I was well into a family of my own. I grow it in the garden and get it in my CSA box and make ratatouille and eggplant parmesan out of it. But I know how that feels. To be alone, with some ingredient as your company, some food item that you would never really eat with others, at least not the way you eat it alone. That head of cabbage I used to buy and steam ever so slightly so I could rip off a leaf at a time, roll it up and eat it like chips while reading the newspaper. Those grapes I buy by the pound and devour selfishly, decadently. And don't even get me going on chocolate chips . . .

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant