Little Plates
Some nights I just want to eat a Frankendinner, ya know?
You know what I mean. A little bit of this and a little bit of that, and none of it adding up to a cohesive whole, but somehow that's what I want anyway.
It occurred to me, after eating the veggie hot dogs and the zucchini in garlic and olive oil and the tomato and basil salad, that we're always expecting life to be like a story is. To have a beginning, a middle, and an end - and more than that - a thrust, a meaning, a punchline - something to pull it all together.
We expect it to be like spaghetti and meatballs, not like a Frankenmeal.
But it feels a lot more like my little plates. A little of this, and a little of that, things that taste different, songs that don't go together. Milkshakes before the meal, pancakes for dinner, chocolate in the morning, and fruit with vinegar. It's weird. And it makes very little sense, except in snippets, flashes of insight that peek through at us like the stars winking here and there in the heavy backlit blanket of a NYC night.
I love Frankendinners. Staple of our childhood - once a week mum would turf everything out of the fridge and into the oven for 30 minutes, then catch-as-catch-can.
I love how you bring it all home in the last couple of paragraphs. Good thoughts there, punkin.
But why do we expect this? Like we expect happiness to arrive with a bow on top, or anything to begin and end with decision. Because someone told us life was meat, starch and two veg on a plate, instead of something richer and less predictable?
I spent the weekend eating heirloom tomatoes chopped, mixed with marinated feta and peppercorns, tossed with garlic chicken sausage and stuffed in whole wheat pita with a touch of baba gannouj. It was delicious.