Amazing how many things that can keep me from this, and I notice that a number of them have to do with food and cooking. Right now I've got a pot of leek soup on the burner in my flashy new red enameled Le Crueset knockoff. It cost fifty bucks, which is about half what the real thing would, but at that price my pot roasts better taste a damn sight better. Sometime in late October my hot liquids alarm was triggered for the season and coffee became not just a tasty caffeinated drink, but also a hand warmer. I dream of hot soups and stews. Last night I made a shrimp creole that practically singed our eyebrows off and forced me to gulp down around 32 oz of water with it. I fantasize about inviting my analretentive relatives over for chicken with dumplings that will warm their hearts enough to overlook my unpainted drywell in the hallway and the rickety stairs.
I guess it's because somewhere along the line I swallowed, hook line and sinker, the idea that food= love and comfort. Maybe because there was such a paucity of it in my house as a kid. My mother was depressed and isolated, her closest friends, wait, her only friends were her feuding family, and my father was a workaholic -alcoholic that couldn't find interpersonal warmth with a map. The only time I really felt love and belonging was dinnertime when my mother poured all her frustrated ambition into the mashed potatoes and roast beef.
Sad, huh? Yep. It is. But it's a pattern of thinking that frequently grabs at me, and I fall down the rabbit hole, or at least realize I'm hanging onto reality and food sobriety by my fingernails. If I'm lucky I'll catch myself before I fall into the abyss.
17 days and counting.
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