Food for Thought

During the last week of 2014 I went out to eat three times. This is a rarity for me and each meal gave me food for thought.

The first meal I was invited to via Facebook, the great beacon of reconnection. There were a couple of old classmates of mine who were “coming home” for Christmas and thought it would be fun to get together to mark the year of our 40^th birthdays. I had missed out on my class's ten year reunion and there was a part of me that really wanted to go to this gathering. However, being who I am, there was also a part of me that didn't want to go to this lunch: I had already been to numerous gatherings over the holidays, I could really use some quiet time by myself, I didn't know who was all going to be there, etc., etc.. Plus gravity has been tugging at my face this year. Maybe I should just stay home.

I didn't decide till the morning of the get-together whether I would go. And then our van had winter trouble on the way to church. Maybe I should just enjoy a quiet afternoon at home after all. But no, now that I had decided, I didn't want to change my mind.

A solution was found and my family dropped me off at the door to the restaurant.

First I had to go to the restroom to wash my hands – and surreptitiously walk by the window so I could see who was there. It didn't help much; all I could see were the backs of heads and a man I didn't recognize.

So gathering up my courage, in I walked. And I was delighted that the first person I saw was my good friend Sharon, who was one of the organizers of this event, whom I hadn't seen in 22 years, but with whom I had been good friends in high school. She looked exactly the same as she had in high school, only better. I sat down beside her, greeting my other classmates, most of whom live around here and I see periodically, and Cathy, the other organizer whom I also hadn't seen in 22 years. Everyone looked exactly the same as they did in high school – I would have recognized each of them in a crowd - except for the one lone male who braved an hour with a bunch of middle aged women whom I struggled the entire time to reconcile, fairly unsuccessfully, with the friend I had hung out with in high school.

It was a good time. I was very glad I had gone and caught up on my classmates' lives instead of on a bit of sleep. It struck me how very much the same we all were and yet how different we were from 22 years ago. How we take our essential selves along wherever and for however long, and yet there is always the hope or perhaps the guarantee of change. Some of the people had experienced change they would have preferred not to have, some had created their own magnificent change, and yet each person remained ultimately themselves. It was good motivation to become the best version of myself. As Elizabeth Gilbert says in her book Eat, Pray, Love, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, “It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.”

A couple days later, I was dining at the Deer + Almond restaurant in Winnipeg. Once a year, I end up in a restaurant I would not commonly frequent. There is an annual event in our family called The Sibling Supper. My husband, his two sisters, and their attending partners get together sometime around Christmas when the cosmopolitan sister is home from world travels or life in the big city to go to a restaurant of a particular nature, chosen by the couple who lives in Winnipeg. We have been doing this for almost ten years.

The thing to realize about me is that I am a very cautious eater. I like comfort food, I like “normal” food, and while I am not a vegetarian by any stretch, I am nervous around meat. I definitely don't like too much (if any) fat, I don't like unidentifiable meat, I don't like meat that deviates too far from the tried and true three (chicken, beef and maybe pork).

This makes me an anomaly in this group of people.

The cosmopolitan sister, of course, likes to try new food. My husband looks forward to this event every year as it's one of very few opportunities he has to go to an experimental restaurant with other people who get excited about trying unusual foods. For him, this is The Social Event of the Year. And there's my brother-in-law. He is as un-cautious about food as I am cautious about it. He loves fat; the more the merrier. (Every time our family butchers, he's there throwing extra fat into the ground meat as fast as I'm scooping it out. It usually balances out in the end.) He seems to love every and any kind of meat from any part of the animal. The more experimental the food, the better.

I always go to the Sibling Supper. I wouldn't think of not going. But I'm always nervous. What will I be obliged to eat this year? I have eaten many things I would never have dreamed of at these events: sushi (though not the raw meat ones; I have to draw the line somewhere), chicken livers, bone marrow, calamari, to name a few. Though perhaps “eaten” is too strong a word. “Tasted” might be more appropriate.

This year, however, proved to be different. For the last several years, we have gone to restaurants that serve tapas, which is essentially a variety of different plates with a little food for a fairly large sum of money which everyone shares. This year was the same. And so the food was ordered.

The food came. And it was good. And my brother-in-law and I both enjoyed the food! I even felt full at the end of the meal! I tried rabbit this year.

There again, the hope for change and yet also the essential self remaining. I am sorry for my husband that I am not a very experimental eater, and I probably won't rush out and catch a rabbit to eat, which was actually pretty good, but with continued exposure and a little more relaxed nature, even I can grow accustomed to trying new things on occasion.

Then, one day into the new year, I went grocery shopping. I ended up being in town over lunch, so I stopped in McDonald's to grab a bite to eat. I had a coupon. I ate with myself and the Winnipeg Sun. There are people whom I dined with earlier that week who would refuse to darken the door of said restaurant, but I don't mind. It always makes me feel like a kid: would mom and dad take us out for lunch or would we have to go home and eat fried eggs and toast? A discussion would ensue in Low German to determine our destiny for the day. What a treat to have them say yes to McDonald's. It still feels like a treat to me. Silly, perhaps, and not very nutritious, but still. There I am dragging my essential self even to McDonald's, enjoying my own company and my own comfortable food.

Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Matthew 6:10 - 12