Eating alone is a peculiar ritual. Some people relish the freedom to eat the same dish over and over again, some enumerate the joys of solo restaurant dining, and some claim that eating alone is a miserable experience that nobody should have to endure. I recently finished reading Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant by Jenni Ferrari-Adler, an anthology of twenty-six reflections on solitary meals. The stories range from heartwarming and deeply personal to absurd and comical. More than just a series of essays by food writers, the anthology provides a peek into the varying relationships people have with solitude.
Flipping through the solo kitchen adventures made me think about my affinity for cooking and eating alone. I can spend hours poring over cookbooks and online recipe variations, trying to figure out what to do with that 3-foot long squash I have on the counter or the 20 zucchini in the fridge. I love spending all morning making blueberry jam from the plastic bag heavy with blueberries just-picked from the neighbors patch, singing along to Alison Krauss, then pulling a loaf of bread out of the oven and making a grilled cheese with the jam to eat on the porch alone. Winter has been known to find my pantry shelves full of jars upon jars of canned, pickled and jammed summer bounty made during long days alone in the kitchen. I love when, on a Sunday afternoon, I can say, “I’m sorry, as much as I want to come get a pizza with you, I can’t today. My bread is rising and I have a bushel of apples to peel for apple butter.”
There is little I enjoy more than having an entire day free with the house to myself, with no one to complain about how I have the oven on in the middle of a 100-degree day or compete with me for the four stove burners. I can make a royal mess of the kitchen (as I inevitably do), spilling bits of garlic and onion to be burned to a crisp by the gas stove and dusting the floor with flour. Then I can clean it all up before anyone is the wiser. I can subsist on 90% vegetables, cooking recipe after recipe from Ottolenghi’s Plenty More cookbook, and nobody is there to point out that we should throw in a starch or some meat to the menu. When I cook for other people, I feel anxious about whether they will like it, or I remember another time when I made the same dish for myself and it turned out better. When I cook for myself, I can take as long as I want, I can eat whenever my tummy grumbles, and I’m the only one who has to think it is delicious.
None of this is to say that I don’t enjoy cooking for and eating with others. I absolutely love throwing carefully planned dinner parties for a small group of friends. Once, my roommate and I made a lobster pot full of ramen broth, leaving it on the stove overnight and each waking up every other hour to check on its progress. It was only in the morning we realized the other was doing the exact same thing on the opposite hour. Then we threw a bring-your-own-ramen-ingredients party with the salty, fatty, porky broth as the star of the show. Another time we planned a 4 course beer-pairing dinner for 10 in our small, freezing apartment. The dinners were fantastic, but my favorite part was always the careful planning before the guests arrived.
The aforementioned ramen co-conspirator’s cooking and eating habits fall perfectly in line with mine, and we can inhabit the same kitchen seamlessly. When she is around, I happily share my cooking and eating time, as her penchant for daylong cooking projects mirrors my own. But when we are in separate cities and I have a free day and a fridge full of vegetables, you’ll probably find me alone in the kitchen with the oven on and two or three projects in the works.
Emily graduated from Yale University with a B.S. in geology. Don't ask her about rocks though, she is interested in the intersection of fisheries, fisherfolk, and climate change.