Originally posted 02/25/2005
Snow flew last night for the second time in a week. But this time it was like cartoon snow, fake snow, Christmas-special-on-the-set snow. And it was cold. We complained bitterly the last half-block of our block-and-a-half journey to the Italian restaurant across Union from the Tea Lounge. He’s sensitive to spice, grossed out by tomatoes, and finds white rice constipating. I worry that this bodes ill for future dinners, especially those that I prepare. I can forgo the white rice, but consider hot peppers and tomatoes further evidence, along with beer (thank you, Ben Franklin), that God loves us. We’re weird about food. All of us. Squinting down the left side of the menu, I eliminate all but two of the antipasti, but they are bad bets anyway. The baked mussels won’t do much to restore my decimated blood sugar; then there’s my suspicion that mussel broth is some unacceptable parts per billion mussel pee. The salad with beets and radicchio is another less than perfect option: the beets are high in sugar and radicchio is prickly and hard to load onto a fork. And unless the pecorino is excessively generous, in which case the fat content will be off the chart, the salad will contain too little protein to mend my daily wear and tear. Together, the two apps add up to almost an acceptable whole, but I’m a bit embarrassed by my hollow-eyed hunger and need in the face of his modest appetite. I make him promise to take a few bites of my choices, thereby absolving myself of full responsibility for them. He agrees, but I know he doesn’t really want any. He’s trying to lose weight to enhance his yoga practice and I rarely see him eat. I estimate he consumes about half what I, a coach-described “careful eater,” tuck away in a day. The small plates arrive. He daintily picks through a couple of mussels and stabs at a beet. I thoroughly pick the tomatoes out of his octopus salad. Octopus. Uni. While living in Hong Kong, he lost his aversion to things I would hesitate to touch with my fingers, let along swallow. Except for tomatoes. He’ll never eat the tomatoes.
