by Tammara Wells: “It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love,
are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.”
― M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating
I have always loved the writing of M.F.K Fisher. She was an amazing writer who hailed from California and wrote about food and life and love. All things inseparable in my experience. For most of her adult she ricocheted between France and California, writing about food and culture both before, after and during World War II, At the onset of the war, she sailed home to escape the chaos and landed back solidly back in California. As I remember, she had several husbands, which back then was a bit scandalous, but the thing I remember most about her writing was her love of making a simple meal and her joy in immersing herself in all things ‘life’.
Her work impacted me greatly as a young wife and mother. And now, as a wife again, I have been thinking about the different food and meals she wrote about. She wasn’t really a cookbook writer, but more a connoisseur of life… and food was the focus around which everything swirled.
At that point in my life, having been a mother who made bread every week, a noble task but definitely unappreciated by my kids, I strove to cook everything from scratch and make it organic. I loved food and the expression of feeding my family was an art for me. It was also love. The minute the bread was out of the oven it was feasted on and disappeared in a flash! Leaving me to always buy loaves for sandwiches and everyday life. In reality the fresh baked bread WAS appreciated, just not practical in my home as a mother trying to feed husband and kids and to literally try to keep bread on the table, for real. So it was with a lot of the food I made… meals that tasted so good and were so lovingly prepared, disappeared so fast I wondered if they ever even existed.
Early in my first marriage, my husband Marty didn’t cook, but in our partnership, he became quite the chef, which made me very happy. I think he realized that he had to keep up with my culinary skills or I would badger him to death. He made the best Marsala chicken ever from the cookbook, ‘The Silver Palate’, which was a staple in our home. And he loved making pancakes for the kids on Sunday morning.
In the ensuing years, through a variety of lovers, relationships and now my darling new husband Jeff, I have cooked and been cooked for. The men who had their way with a spoon were always dearest to my heart, for there is no better way to seduce me than with food and wine. I KNOW how difficult it is to create a fabulous meal, so appreciate that skill as much as good lovemaking! Both are necessary for romance, so the man who can impress me with food has always been a keeper. Now that I am married again to Jeff, I marvel at the difference between cooking just for myself when a banana and a single boiled egg will do for breakfast and the elaborate waffles and toppings that Jeff concocts for breakfast on weekends. He has also just turned me onto how to make the perfect soft boiled egg, and I love him for that amongst many other skills he has.
Our romance began many, many, years ago over endless dinners of sushi and sake and way back then his cupboards were bachelor bare. I remember one morning nosing around his house looking for a scrap of food I could cook us for breakfast and finding only beer and some very dry leftover pizza. He ate almost every single meal out. There was nothing to work with in his kitchen.
I hustled out to the grocery store and bought all sorts of food because I was appalled at how thin his pickings were. He woke up and was astonished, and wondered where all that food came from. By the next weekend, all the food was gone and we were once again out at restaurants for our meals. Those days are over for a myriad of reasons… namely, it is so damn expensive to eat out now! So these days we both cook. And in the years apart, Jeff has honed his cooking skills quite impressively. So he is definitely a keeper!
Being single, cooking for myself was very spare and sporadic. If I wasn’t hungry, I just didn’t eat. Being a part of a couple, shopping for food, making the food and finally sharing the food, is a big part of my life now. I do love it. It is that special time when the two of us can stop all the busyness of life and concentrate on each other. Sharing the day, marveling over having found one another again, enjoying the riches of love. However, as sweet as these moments are, living once again with a man, and a man with a HUGE appetite, I have gained ten pounds in a year! He plows through food like a herd of elephants and sometimes I just have to marvel at the sheer consumption. He is a crazy athlete, so not an ounce of fat stays on his big frame, even though he can eat half a cake as a midnight snack… and I am reminded how much I have to move and how little I need to eat just to keep up with him. I see where the concept of fat happy wife comes from but I don’t think he would embrace that as readily as I. Anyway, I digress. I meant to examine how much of life is centered around food and sustenance… and how, no matter how unnerving the news and politics is these days, life centers around a good meal.
And it again reminds me of M.F.K. Fisher, ““There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.” and I feel that more now than ever with the moments I have left on this fast moving more than I can possibly keep up, beautiful planet.
