When I was a kid, my friends and I recited ditties about gross food. Disgust is powerful medicine when tamed by meter and rhyme.

Most of my food preferences surfaced after I commenced living alone. Stereotypes of lone consumers are cartoonish: individuals parsimoniously eating lusterless dinners at tables set contemptuously close to restaurant kitchens or gluttonous behemoths secretly gobbling nauseating potpourris. My singular experience opposes these images, yet I couldn’t dispel them. I wrote the above quatrain in the spirit of my kid-self, hoping to purge my thoughts with humor so I could tell the truth about eating alone.

Social people don’t fondly recollect eating alone. Alone-food is what’s handy, swallowed to quell a physical urge before continuing the search for someone with whom to savor tomorrow’s dinner. My mother admits that during the years between my father’s death and our mutual housekeeping, eating was “...something I had to do. I didn’t pay attention to what I ate.” I’d wager she didn’t eat anything she didn’t like, but neither did she prepare delectable meals. Life was gray and passed its pallor over her food.

My innate antipathy for civilization fostered anxiety about living alone before I left home. Being contrary, as well, I forced myself, at an appropriate age, to undertake what I expected would be a painfully essential lesson in autonomous survival. After a week of independence I marveled to my parents, “I can’t believe it. I was born to this.” My reluctant stumble into a situation compatible with my nature graced all aspects of life with a shimmering patina, including food.

I realized that what my mother called mayonnaise was Miracle Whip^®, the reason I had shunned family-made potato salad and loved everyone else’s. Vegetables could be purchased unprocessed, revealing robust aromas and flavors. Hearty, freshly baked bread existed.

Cooking for one produced meals precisely to my taste: Roma tomatoes, onions, garlic and pepperoni, sautéed in oil based herb dressing, tossed with rotini and freshly grated aged parmesan; red leaf lettuce spiked with flaked tuna, toasted soy nuts, crumbled feta, unpeeled cucumbers and wine vinegar; oven crisped tortillas slathered with jalapeño salsa, accompanied with ricotta cheese covered with cracked peppercorns; brown rice mixed with pork bits, steamed broccoli and teriyaki gravy; a sliced, peppered boiled egg, eaten with a nuked yam, skin on, topped with a pat of margarine.

Previously I thought yams were lumps of canned sugar; cooked tomatoes were always stewed or smashed into sauce; cucumbers must be peeled or pickled; salad was iceberg lettuce, a.k.a. solid water; parmesan was pulverized, bleached cardboard, packaged, appropriately, in a cardboard shaker; dressing was pink and slightly sweet or orange and sweeter.

Succinctly put, I discovered the riotous world of food when I discovered my propensity for lived-alone life.

Six months ago our yardman’s wife died. He’s a sprightly gentleman of 80. I worried that he might start “slipping”, as do some older people who lose spouses. Two weeks ago we chatted on the patio. I’d opened the Arcadia door to ventilate the house. I was baking some spice cookies and the scent of cinnamon wafted out on the updraft.

“Mmmm,” he said, “reminds me of my mother’s coffee cake. Mildred (his deceased wife) didn’t care for coffee cake. She was the cook, you know, until she couldn’t, anymore. When I took over just about all she could eat was milk soup and toast, so that’s all I fixed. All I ate, too. Couple of days ago I baked myself a coffee cake just like my mother’s. Ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.” He paused to brush a dry leaf into a pile he’d blown up for disposal. “Sure is nice to fix my favorite foods, again.”

Here’s a man who recognizes the joyous opportunities of eating alone. He’ll be around for awhile.

Text, Recipes & Graphics ©1999 by Gail Rae Hudson

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