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desperanceSometimes I think I could live on nibbles, on appetizers and treats, on chef's perks above all. Give me the parson's nose and the liver and a little crispy skin, and what need more of the chicken?
I love tapas, and meze, and eating family-style as they call it here, sharing everybody else's choices, a little of everything. Going out for dinner with firm friends and a firm custom, where everybody's plate gets passed around the table and you eat only a mathematical share. The Chinese custom - which was only a murmur and a dream before I went to Taipei and found it actually occurring, much to my delight, much to my benefit as the perpetual guest - of picking choice morsels from the communal dish and dropping them into your neighbour's bowl, I love that.
Except that then I do also and quite differently adore a deep deep bowl of rice all to myself, or a heaping* plate of chilli, bulk in comfort and comfort in bulk. A fresh loaf of bread and of course I won't actually eat it all but I could, y'know? If I wanted to?
A shaving of cheese can delight me; I once fell in love over half a grape (tho' that may have been the gesture, more than the comestible**). But volume, sufficiency, abundance delights me too. Even if my middle-aged appetite is no longer sufficient to my still-adolescent yearnings ("his eyes", we say, "are larger than his stomach").
On the other hand, middle-aged me could drink adolescent me under the table. And is more than willing to prove it, any day of the week.
So there is it, a duality reveal'd: sometimes I like little things in abundance, sometimes I just want mass. No lessons to be drawn here. Move along.
*as we also say here - the English edition would say "heaped"
**We were at boarding-school. Grapes were a rarity enough, but gestures of affection? Oh, boy...
I love tapas, and meze, and eating family-style as they call it here, sharing everybody else's choices, a little of everything. Going out for dinner with firm friends and a firm custom, where everybody's plate gets passed around the table and you eat only a mathematical share. The Chinese custom - which was only a murmur and a dream before I went to Taipei and found it actually occurring, much to my delight, much to my benefit as the perpetual guest - of picking choice morsels from the communal dish and dropping them into your neighbour's bowl, I love that.
Except that then I do also and quite differently adore a deep deep bowl of rice all to myself, or a heaping* plate of chilli, bulk in comfort and comfort in bulk. A fresh loaf of bread and of course I won't actually eat it all but I could, y'know? If I wanted to?
A shaving of cheese can delight me; I once fell in love over half a grape (tho' that may have been the gesture, more than the comestible**). But volume, sufficiency, abundance delights me too. Even if my middle-aged appetite is no longer sufficient to my still-adolescent yearnings ("his eyes", we say, "are larger than his stomach").
On the other hand, middle-aged me could drink adolescent me under the table. And is more than willing to prove it, any day of the week.
So there is it, a duality reveal'd: sometimes I like little things in abundance, sometimes I just want mass. No lessons to be drawn here. Move along.
*as we also say here - the English edition would say "heaped"
**We were at boarding-school. Grapes were a rarity enough, but gestures of affection? Oh, boy...