Break me off a piece of that….

There are few joys more wonderful than satisfying a hungry stomach with good food.

On a stomach grumbling for nourishment, the senses come alive with the first bite and with every bite after; that is of course if you don’t overdo it.  But the first bite-and maybe the one or two following- is something special. The body had been asking and sending all sorts of signals and when it gets what it wants…I suppose all sorts of crazy chemical and neurological things are happen all at once, I don’t really know. This much I do know: the feeling is sublime.  Tranquility and excitement are both present at the same moment and things slow down; all that exists is the incredibly sensual[1] moment of eating.

At the top of my head, I can remember two great eating experiences in my life. One was the first morning of my first backpacking trip in West Texas. We had hiked for some time deep into the night, pitched tent in the dark with flashlights, then fell asleep gazing at the bright, blinking multitude of stars only found in that part of the state. The next morning, I woke up before everyone else just as the sun was turning the earth from cold blue to gold, and I found that I was ravishingly hungry. So I grabbed an apple from my pre-packed “squirrel bag” filled with snacking foods, and took a bite.  I’m sure it was just another ordinary Gala apple that you can find anywhere in the U.S., but to this day that apple remains the best apple I have ever eaten in my life. It crisped underneath my bite and released a flood of subtly sweet flavors. I am pretty sure that being out in the beautiful West Texas wilderness, in the perfect stillness and silence of early morning (save for the birds about), that had something to do with the taste of it as well. But what an experience.  I ended up eating literally every piece of that apple, save the seeds and the stem.

My next favorite food experience comes from the day I graduated from AmeriCorps NCCC, July 22^nd, 2009. Mom had flown in to watch me graduate in a small, rather run-down auditorium just off of our base, McClellan Park. I had packed my two suitcases and my backpack in the back of our rental car so we could leave right after, so after I took my last photos with my team and said goodbye, we were out of there.

First thing on the agenda-and especially if your with Mom and it’s the right time of day-is to find good food. Luckily, I had just discovered Yelp a few days earlier and wanted to check out a local-food restaurant that had great ratings, Mulvany’s.  The setting was low key but classy, lots of brick and the kitchen had an intimately in-your-face visibility, something I took advantage of to watch a chef prepare something on my way to the bathroom.  We were seated outdoors which seemed as if we had just walked into the quaint, elegant space of someone’s patio where a few couples were already eating and laughing over wine. All at once given the surroundings,  I felt instantly transformed into someone who could afford this type of food on a regular basis, and that small little warm bubble of exotic excitement of tasting a foreign world formed inside me. The food would prove to trump whatever feeling of “class” I thought I was experiencing.

We left Mulvany’s in a happy afterglow of content from an excellent dining experience, after which was hard to beat even in San Francisco.

Which leads me to my originally purpose of dragging this post out: eating is an experience.

At least, it should be.

American culture is not typically one of making eating an experience; it is seen for becoming satisfied from the food. What makes food memorable though is the occasion and setting AND the food itself.  When I was 16 I created a slightly pretentious rule that forbids me to eat crap chocolate- namely the Hershey’s or Cadburry variety, or anything of similar (non)quality-[2] as chocolate should be a profound sensory/eating experience. Something special and occasional, like most refined sugars should be. (Tell that to me when I smell fresh baked bread…the rule goes flying out the window, the bread into my mouth.)

Do I eat crap chocolate? Absolutely. But I usually end up making a snooty judgmental face and throw it/giving away. One of the great things about Mexico is that they have absolutely crap crap chocolate.  I’m talking about store bought chocolate here, the stuff you could pick up at the local Oxxo on your way to grab a Guayaba Boing! fruit drink. (The hand grinded cacoa that you can find in Oaxaca is a different story.)  I say great because that makes the good stuff all the more sweet.

Speaking of sweet, Yvette bought me a moleskin recipe notebook, which makes me ache for a kitchen and a chance to make some of my favorite dishes. Instead of doing homework, I’ve been filling the moleskin up with recipes from Dori Greenspan and NPR and drooling over my keyboard at the idea of baking cookies again…

The foodie in me can’t wait for December and the holidays, when I will be back in Texas (read->home) and cooking cooking cooking. (Followed by cleaning, naturally.)

And best of all, it will be with the family.

Food rant done. I’m off to mush my brain by watching Monte Carlo…*