#1: Feeling Dreadful About Food

I miss restaurants.

Dec 08, 2020

Hi there! If you’re reading this, you were originally subscribed to my newsletter Alexandra Weekly. It’s now called Forest for Trees and lives on Substack. Forest for Trees will be a little different than Alexandra Weekly with more focus on long-form writing and freedom for me to write about whatever I want.

Simplifying

My last blog-like post in August felt like a different time. There are now climbing infection numbers, and it seems like those numbers have been creeping closer in proximity. Three people in my own circle have known someone who has covid or know-someone-who-knows-someone who has it, and those friends are hearing the same from their friends. The disease feels more dangerous as it gets colder, which we were warned about over and over again.

For the first time, I had a dream about covid. A doctor re-read my test result from two weeks ago and told me I had been positive—when I had originally been told I was negative—and the horror set in as I realized I had not quarantined for those two weeks. Typically my dreams are not very visual (a part of my suspected aphantasia) but during lockdown, they have either become more detailed or I’ve been able to recall them better in the morning.

During lockdown, I’ve continued doing my makeup out of routine and self-care (self-care = things that make me feel good), but my makeup has changed from colorful eyeshadow to just SPF, glowy cheeks, and concealer. Many things have simplified: journaling, which was once a detailed art, is now just scribbling; talking to friends via facetime just keep the friendship alive while we physically have to stay apart for so long, and most prominently, cooking and eating, which has turned into something I need to do just to survive.

Omelet Love

It never felt like I went to a lot of restaurants in the before-times, but they were a big part of my relationships. It meant going to brunch every month at Temple Bar with Kat to catch up and agonize over the same three things on the menu only to pick the same thing we always get (and always ALWAYS getting their ricotta donuts). Or going to Alden & Harlow with Erin (hidden food places being the last best thing about Harvard Square) and carefully picking a plethora of plates for us to talk about while eating, both of us foodies in our own respect. David and I loved to go out for cocktails and try new ones at Less Than Greater Than, a little speakeasy down the street, and see if they were always good enough to try and recreate at home. These occasions never made me cook less at home or crave more restaurant dining—I just saw them as a means for connection.

I recently told David that food meant more to me than just survival. It means enjoying what I created and what I put into my body, sure, but also who I’m eating with. If I’m alone it means a moment of meditation, even if I’m just watching a mindless TV show while eating. That means it’s a break from the feeling to push and go-go-go and produce-produce-produce.

Creating dishes and eating at home has become a chore. I eat less food overall and I make the same things over and over. I’ve definitely stopped making “extras”: the pies, cookies, pastries. Only what’s necessary. Every meal has become not a meditation, but a zoning out.

A lot of people have read this article already in the New Yorker by Helen Rosner, but I love the way she talked about the universal lack of enthusiasm in the kitchen during covid:

“Much of the happiness I used to find in cooking—even when cooking became, sort of, my job—was rooted in how tangible it was, in both labor and outcome. Simple, repetitive, semi-creative tasks like kneading dough and chopping dill are supposed to thaw us when we’re frozen with existential dread, to ground us in the tactile world, to give us a sense of power and control over the small universe of the cutting board and the stovetop. This makes sense, I know it’s true, and I guess I remember living it, and believing it. But lately it feels awfully far away.”

Then a week ago, I watched Big Night for the first time. The only thing I had really known about it was the timpano, which Binging with Babish had recreated long ago (to me, it doesn’t look great. I think it’s the eggs! It just seems like a lot of stuff!). If you don’t know the film, it’s about two Italian brothers played by Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub in the 1950s who are trying to save their dying restaurant. They have one chance to save it with a big night when musician Louis Prima is invited to dine at their restaurant. Guests show up to see Louis Prima and while they wait, have the best dinner of their lives served to them by the brothers.

There are so many themes to explore in the film, but two I loved were passion and love for cooking and brotherly love. Those who have Big Night before know the famous final scene. (What actually inspired me to watch Big Night was Nicole Cliffe’s brief return on Twitter and her comment about the final scene in Big Night being one of the best food scenes ever in a film.)

But the first scene that got me good is when Primo brings the woman he has a crush on into his kitchen. He has talked to her before in the film, but he was—well, a bumbling idiot. Missing his queues to take her on a date, stumbling a little too far into her flower box (she’s a florist!), and just overall being awkward as heck. But during the big night, he takes her into the kitchen where he’s cooking the entire meal. With confidence we haven’t seen before, he begins reminiscing about Italy and asks if she’s been there before, and tells her what it’s like. He shows her how he’s cooking the food and even feeds her himself. He tells her: “To eat good food is to be close to God.”

It not only touches me always to see two onscreen cuties (that being Tony Shalhoub and Allison Jenney in this scene), but to see a character so passionate in cooking—or in any craft—that it gives them confidence. A passion that brings out their true nature and shows everyone who they really are because they have the confidence to do it.

Great Scene: “Big Night”. The power of visual storytelling in the… | by Scott Myers | Go Into The Story

Cue tears.

As for the final scene, the best scene: I don’t have siblings, but brotherly/sisterly love really gets me. That unconditional stuff. I’m not going to spoil the entirety of the final scene for those who haven’t seen it before, but I’ll just say that the scene is all about food bringing people together. It’s about unconditional love and how sometimes, no words need to be said when there’s food on the table. You have to watch the whole film to really get it, which I highly recommend.

But what also got me about this scene was what led up to it. Stanley Tucci’s character, Secondo, takes a steel pan and sets it on a high flame. He cracks a few eggs into a bowl and scrambles them up with a fork. After putting a bit of oil into the pan and shifting it back and forth to cover the bottom, he pours the eggs in, and they sizzle in the pan until they fry into an omelet. He gives them a bit of a push in the pan with a wooden spatula before pushing them out onto plates.

While rewatching the final scene on Youtube, I found this comment. I love the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Small world.

Folks, I love this omelet. It looks amazing. It has nothing in it. And since seeing this film, I have been making little omelets the same way: just eggs, maybe some mushrooms thrown in, salt and pepper. I’ll make it alongside some tea, a bagel or English muffin, and that will be my breakfast. And making this simple little omelet has brought me a tiny bit of joy I used to have in the before-times with food.

This is a different kind of simple. Usually, I’m baking pies, looking up new recipes to try—recipes that I have to lean over and read on the countertop as I cook away on the stove or intermittently peek through the oven glass. But creating a simple omelet that doesn’t have a lot of cleanup or a recipe has for some reason sparked that little joy.

So thanks, Big Night.

Are there any movies you’ve watched during lockdown that has brought on inspiration or joy like this? Or any you’ve watched for the first time that you’d recommend?

Forest for Trees

#1: Feeling Dreadful About Food

I miss restaurants.

Simplifying

Omelet Love

Discussion about this post