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 Restaurant Addiction: Pinnacle Of Civilization, Or Evolutionary Regression? By Mari Wadsworth Editor's note: Our regular columnist, Rebecca Cook, is taking a well-deserved vacation and will resume her proper place at the table next week. We beg your indulgence with this week's side dish. EATING STANDS AS one of life's greatest pleasures. Bread: the staff of life. Wine: the nectar of the gods. Cereal: breakfast of champions. "Nothing beats a good steak," people say. Oh, yes. Eating is the cherry on the sundae of life.
When I moved out on my own, I became a vegetarian out of sheer laziness: The only thing I'd ever cooked was spaghetti--once, in the seventh grade, when my stepmom decided to take up night school. I still remember my father waiting patiently as I stood perplexed in front of a stubborn clump of noodles that had looked fine moments before in the boiling water. Tears sprang to my eyes over this failure, which could only mean we'd have to wait, forlorn and hungry, until Joy came home. I've rarely looked on my dad with such love and admiration as when he rescued the colander from my limp hands, and deftly turned that solid mass back into steaming, edible strands with a surge of hot water from the tap. Wow. Joy earned her AA degree ahead of schedule, and I never set foot in the kitchen again, except to retrieve the warmed-over dinners left carefully in the oven after my parents went to bed. The willingness to eat anything put in front of me lasted through my first year of college in the dormitories. My sophomore year, I discovered Slim-Fast. One scoop, one ingredient (milk), one dish to clean afterwards. It was even chocolate-flavored. My life was complete. Alas, after six months my traitorous body began yearning for the solid foods. I joined the UC Irvine Vegetarian Club, rich in pot-luck dinners and irony supplements. (For the uninitiated, Irvine, California, is adjacent to Newport Beach, where Yuppies swam downstream to spawn in the 1980s. A place for any pretense of counter-culture, it was not.) For these pot-lucks, a half-dozen surprisingly unwashed college students far more resourceful than I would each bring a nutritionally balanced dish to somebody's house. "Work with whatever food group you feel comfortable with," a young woman with a soothing voice told me. "Oh, we're not ovo-lacto intolerant," she smiled. I had no idea what she was talking about; I wondered if that meant drugs might be offered at some point in the evening. Not surprisingly, I brought carob-flavored soy milk, the closest thing to a Slim-Fast shake I could find at Trader Joe's. Perhaps slightly more surprising is that's what I continued to bring...for two years. Then I graduated and moved away. I'll skip the past decade and cut to the chase: As a single, adult professional, my reasonable salary and lack of familial responsibility means I can afford to eat out every day without guilt or excuse. In other words, I've entirely regressed to the hunter-gatherer state. This is not a good thing. Entering my kitchen now is not the mindless act of a person opening the fridge or the larder for some quickie repast. It's an evolutionary battleground; it's the ultimate test to see whether I'll survive the elements, which in this case are the crisper, gas range, cookbook and paring knife. Aside from the Toast-R-Oven, which I adore, I'm at war with the electric appliance family. (Incidentally, where does "larder" come from? Did people historically store fat in their homes? Do we call it that today because it's where the majority of deceptively labeled fat-free snacks are consumed?) Oh, yes. This is a cautionary tale.
A grocery store? Were they open all night? I felt skeptical that they would have what I wanted: perfectly grilled swordfish steaks, with a side of herbed risotto and perhaps some lightly steamed baby asparagus. Hell, I'd even settle for garlic mashed potatoes, provided they had a hint of rosemary; or perhaps just a simple melange of sautéed red and yellow bell peppers, some exotic greens and a mild, goat cheese dressing.... My stomach whinged tentatively, but my brain (fueled by long-absent sugar, who could blame it?) mutinied. A body divided against itself can not stand, so we sat down to consider the options, only one of which seemed to present itself: starve, and then get up at the crack of dawn and drive to the nearest breakfast establishment. I had reached the furthest point on the spectrum, not even worthy of the title "hunter-gatherer." I was a "sit-down-and-orderer." I was one of those people the vegetarian club used to make fun of--people who complained about not being able to lose weight even though they exercised; who didn't know where their money went; who never paused to think what a weird concept it is for an able-bodied adult to have their meal served to them by another adult, whom they've never met. Far from any willingness to eat whatever's put in front of me, I realized I'd rather go hungry than compromise. It was a strange moment of freedom and vulnerability; of steadfastness and insanity. And then I heard my mother's voice: "If you don't like what we're having, don't eat anything at all."
I considered calling her up at that very moment (now going on
1:30 a.m.) to let her know after 27 years I'd decided to take
her up on her suggestion; but she's long since relegated these
late-night revelations to her answering machine. Besides, with
the kids all grown, she's turned into a restaurant junkie, too.
I've got two words for ya: Soup Plantation. Don't laugh. You could
be next.
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Paradoxically, the majority of my life has been a quest
to circumvent the process. I came into this world, as family albums
regrettably attest, wearing or regurgitating the majority of culinary
options presented. Though much later in life a less dramatic version
of this finicky behavior would resurface, in the intervening years
I accomplished what presumably most kids do: eat whatever was
put in front of me, and like it. I became so adept at this (assisted
in no small part by the fact that my stepmother was some kind
of hamburger savant, whipping up meals the likes of which I have
neither equaled nor even, to this day, divined), that I was able
to forget about the mundane aspects of food preparation all together.
At 12:30 a.m. on a Tuesday, having forgotten to eat and ravenously
hungry, I realized my life had reached a turning point. Unfortunately,
I had no idea where or which way to turn. All the restaurants
of my choosing had long since scrubbed their kitchens and called
it a night. And although for the most part I'm an egalitarian
eater (I consider myself a "non-practicing vegetarian,"
after the religious model introduced by a Jewish friend who so
casually and respectfully used the term without a hint of irony,
I became instantly convinced it was entirely plausible to honor
a belief system without actually being burdened to uphold it in
any organized manner), for some reason in moments of crisis or
great inconvenience, I return dogmatically to my selective vegetarianism.
So fast food was out of the question.
