Due to some slightly unusual circumstances, I’m eating alone a little more than normal these days. This is fine, as long as it doesn’t happen too frequently. While I enjoy the occasional quiet evening when it’s just me, a bowl of pasta and a pile of New Yorkers, in my experience too much eating alone eventually leads to no good.
This has got me thinking about all the ways and reasons people come together to eat. I’m immediately reminded how universal gathering for a feast is. Crossing all cultural, class, race, age and gender divisions, as a species, we’re a beast that likes to feast and have been doing so since, well, forever.
It’s hard to think of an event that doesn't require the organizing of food and drink (and napkins and utensils, cups and plates.) Weddings (hello Faith!), graduations and all rites of passage, birthdays, the harvest, promotions, retirements, births, deaths, holidays. We gather together to participate in one of the oldest and deepest rituals we know: sharing our food as an act of celebration.
I especially love a good pot luck where folks from different food traditions come together. Recently, I attended one in which my plate held sushi, kimchi, spare ribs (southern US style), corn on the cob, hummus and pita and a nice sauerkraut. I went back for a taste of fish tacos and pork tamales and a stunningly tasty saffron risotto. Dessert choices included chocolate chip cookies, mochi ice cream and rose geranium panna cotta.
I say let’s do this more often and for no specific reason except that it’s fun. Wouldn’t it be wild to put on a grand feast just because? Neighborhood pot lucks are on the rise and block parties, too. I see this as a sign of hope, that we’re starting to learn, or perhaps re-learn, what it means to be a community. Recently in the New York Times there was an article about a neighborhood block in Oakland, CA that had been meeting for a monthly potluck for eighteen years. Now if that’s not going to save the world, I don’t know what is.
(Image: Gillian Laub for The New York Times)
I think I feel most lonely when I am eating alone.
Something in the activity of sharing food makes things more intimate, and more alive.
I love the idea of a regular "for no better reason than we want to" potluck. Like you, I adore the myriad ways that one can reflect on the theme of these type of things, and I also really love the ability to get to know my friends a bit more through their food. I also love the idea of coming together for no better reason than we love each other. It's one thing to be somewhere out of obligation (even if you want to be there) and to be somewhere "just because". I love just becauses.
view Daigan's profile
....I'm going to dissent with this a bit -- at least, to a portion of it.
Yes, sharing food is a wonderful thing. But I think it's a dangerous notion to say that eating alone is somehow inferior -- as this is the notion that dissuades many people FROM treating themselves well if they are alone. Eating with other people is made out to be "real eating," and if we belittle eating alone, then for the many people who are alone by chance or by choice, "eating" becomes nothing more than just grazing, or standing in front of the fridge, or slumping in front of the TV with a leftover takeout container.
And this is a problem.
Eating alone can be just as much of a celebration as eating together, and should be treated -- and respected -- as such. There can be something tremendously nurturing in preparing a wonderful meal just for yourself alone, setting the table just for yourself, and settling in to eat -- permitting yourself this time, affirming that you deserve it, is both grounding and uplifting.
This is not to say that we should all become social isolates, of course. But I believe that in lauding the group dining experience as "better", we make those who have no choice but to eat alone give up because they're somehow "doing it wrong". And that does them -- okay, me -- a disservice.
view empresscallipygos's profile
This made me think of Amelie and her bowl of pasta.
I eat most of my meals alone, too, although I try at least once a month to host a feast (hosted one yesterday, in fact). I savor every meal, but I openly admit that when I have something especially good, I wish my Hun, a friend, or really any good dining companion were around to share it.
view OneWallKitchen's profile
empresscallipygos--
I completely agree with you and extend my apologies if my post somehow implied that eating in a group is superior to eating alone. My intention was not to play one against the other or to create comparisons. While this time around the theme was about eating in groups, I could just have easily written a piece titled 'In Praise of Eating Alone' ...which come to think of it is a great idea for a post! Thank you for the inspiration.
Dana
view Dana V's profile
i agree whole-heartedly with empresscallipygos. this post actually made me feel bad about myself.
view LegsBattaglia's profile
I love when particular posts create conversations. Sometimes my conversation is with myself, sometimes I post a comment for others to engage with. It's kinda the same for me with eating. Part of the juiciness of this posting is that we're each of us writing of our own POV...room for them all at the table.
view truedharma's profile