alone in the kitchen with an eggplant

In the mail yesterday, I got a book I'd ordered from Amazon: Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone.

A friend was over for dinner, so I wasn't dining alone last night, although I do most nights, a fact that doesn't make me sad.

We had a dinner that featured zucchini and red new potatoes, along with hamburgers and ice cream sandwiches {those last two things were not eaten at the same time, of course}, and after dinner, we took baby pug for a long walk.

A late afternoon rainstorm had finally broken the heat, and I was wearing jeans for the first time since the beginning of July when I'd been in France.

As enjoyable as the evening was—and should my friend be reading this, I want to stress that I was so grateful for all the laughing we did—there was a hush of anticipation within me the whole night.

When she leaves, I can read my book about dining alone. I kept thinking this and then shaking my head to shake the thought away.

When one of your best friends is sitting across the table from you with a hamburger on a pretzel roll in her hands, you probably shouldn't be thinking about reading in bed.

But I was, and I just needed to admit that.

That's how excited I was for this book, which combines two of my loves: writing and food.

The title is the same as an essay by one of my favorite writers, Laurie Colwin. In her essay, there's this delicious paragraph:

Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam.

For a moment, let's relish that incredibly smart idea of a peanut butter and bacon sandwich. That is yet another example of combining two of my loves.

Moving on, let's think about cooking and eating alone.

I do it out of circumstance: I live alone, so most nights, it is just me. And I love it. Some people have to learn to love eating alone {or living alone}, but I took to it {to both of those things} with gusto and gumption.

As much as I love family dinners—and my family ate dinner together every night when I was growing up—and as much as I love dinner parties and having friends over for dinner, to me, there is such pleasure in spreading out the paper in front of me at dinner time.

Or reading a book of essays at the table.

Or even watching TV while eating. {Don't tell people I do that; it's a little secret of mine.}

There is such pleasure in making precisely what you want to eat and then sitting down in a space that is wholly yours and enjoying it: the quiet, the food, the time.

I realize not everyone feels this way. You, for example, might not relish cooking and eating alone.

Tell me: do you? Do you think dinner alone is one of life's pleasures?