Apology

Dear Dinner,

I miss you. It’s been a long time since we shared an evening together. You used to be so special to me. I’d think about you all day long, slowly churning recipes in my head with thoughts of produce lingering in the refrigerator, and arrive home, stomach lightly rumbling, and ready to prepare you, my final, and favorite, meal of the day.

I’m sorry, lonely eggplant rotting on my kitchen counter. It’s not for lack of want that you are slowly wasting away. It’s simply that you no longer fit into a day in which I made three separate gougeres recipes, and taste-tested nine more during the final hour of baking class. I can’t thank you enough for your nutrient-rich patience that has greeted me each evening as I return from culinary school too full to commit to cutting into you. If it makes you feel any better, the wilting kale in the refrigerator I’m sure feels every bit as neglected.

Please forgive me, pile of cookbooks I checked out of the library last week. Your crisp spines have stayed solidly shut, your pages are still unturned, and your recipes remain your own, well-kept secrets. Just know that I had the best intentions when I brought you home—new recipes for fall, variations on seafood favorites, and perhaps some snappy muffins for the mornings too. You’ll have to go back to the library soon, I’m afraid, but know you’ll not be forgotten and someday, in a time of less abundance, perhaps we’ll meet again.

I apologize, body, for treating you this way. I know that fall is your favorite season, usually filled with slow-roasted starchy root vegetables, and thoughts of warm apple cider, and fragrant, quick-loaves of bread. It’s not that I no longer care about you, because that certainly is not the truth. It’s that I return from class having had a tasting of mini-cheesecakes, or six kinds of baked squash, or oysters prepared four ways, and I simply cannot bear to turn on the stove, or contemplate where to fit another morsel of food into you. I understand that you are likely lacking some vitamins, and maybe some minerals and that you, left-foot Achilles tendon, are particularly irked from too many trips to the gym, but I ask that you stick this out with me just a little longer—pumpkin ale counts as a vegetable in a pinch.

Jessica

Dinner.