Alone In the Kitchen With an Eggplant

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant:

Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler

Picked up this book from my roommate, and have been thoroughly enjoying it on the subway.  Each chapter represents a separate essay, detailing stories from all cookers and eaters.   Some stories ring true for me.   Since arriving in Boston 3 weeks ago, I have been adjusting to the new city, the new expectations required in grad school, and a new life.   Also I have been cooking solo.  I see my own quirky tastes mirrored in many of the author's sentiments.  It's true. We fall back on odd food habits when we dine for one.

Here I highlight my favorite selections:

Introduction

by Jenni Ferrari-Adler

We agreed [...] that in cooking for ourselves, presentation [goes] out the window.  When I considered it later, though, I had to admit I liked my [...] mismatched thrift-store plates, chopsticks, and canning jars.  I even liked, I'm sorry to say, eating sandwiches while walking to class.  There was real pleasure to be had eating ice cream out of the container and pickles out of a glass jar, standing up at the counter.

Sharing stories of eating alone had made me less lonely.

If you choose to give this book to yourself, to keep it in your kitchen, my hope is that it will give you some company, some inspiration, some recipes that require no division or subtraction.  I hope it will remind you that alone and lonely are not synonymous; you will have yourself-and your food- for company.

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant

by Laurie Colwin

When I was alone, I lived on eggplant, the stove-top cook's strongest ally.  I fried it and stewed it, and ate it crisp and sludgy, hot and cold.  It was cheap and filling and was delicious in all manner of strange combination.  If any was left over I ate it cold the next day on bread.

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.