Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone

by Jenni Ferrari-Adler

Where was my mother?

Cooking for others had often been my way of offering care. So why, when I was alone, did I find myself trying to subsist on cereal and water? I’d need to learn to cook for one.

The ceiling was fairly high—a good thing since a low one would have made my apartment feel like the inside of a box of animal crackers.

Eating as a simple means of ending hunger is one of the great liberties of being alone, like going to the movies by yourself in the afternoon or, back in those golden days of youth, having a cigarette in the bathtub.

Could I say no, in fact I’ve opened a fresh sleeve of Saltines tonight?

“Hiya, black-eyed pea! Get in here! We didn’t forget you!” Then they all sing some kind of bean song.

But to get dried black beans tender, in my experience, you have to boil them for approximately six days. You know what I say to that? Give me the can opener.

What does an introvert do when he’s left alone? He stays alone.

A great meal alone is joyous but ending it with a lot of dishwashing diminishes the effect.

Given the overdose of choice in the global-capitalist world, I normally have a hard time deciding what to cook.

For me, the proof did not come in the pudding, but in being surrounded by pudding lovers.

Siena, late May, with my mom. Cut it with a Swiss Army knife; juice ran down my arm. I asked her what the hell those red things were we’d been eating all those years. 5.