Eating Alone

I got a review copy of "Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant" yesterday. It's a collection of essays about eating and cooking by yourself. I think Beverly Lowry explains well the reason the subject merits a book. ". . . whatever we do for pleasure, we should try to do, or learn to do, and practice on occasion, in solitude. A kind of test to gauge our skills and see how deep the passion lies. . .. " I rarely cook for myself, but every now and then, it's satisfying to take the time -- last weekend, after craving a steak for days, I went to the store, bought a porterhouse, came home and grilled it, did a potato on fast-bake, went to the garden for chives, made a salad, opened a mini bottle of wine, and had a dinner I would never make for the family while the family was out doing other things. Placemat, wine glass and all.
My mother had six kids, and she stayed home and took care of things. When I was in elementary school, we walked home for lunch, and we never never ate out (maybe once a year we went to McDonald's, brought our own milk and ate in the car). So for years my mother rarely made anything just for herself. But every once in awhile, she would make herself a dish of cottage cheese salad. It involves getting a lot of ingredients out of the refrigerator and chopping them up, so it's a certain amount of trouble. I was always impressed that she would do that just for herself, and it was a small shock to my childish self-involvement that she would take a break from caring for us. Like perhaps she existed outside her role as mother.

Her cottage cheese salad is delicious, and I often make it for myself, especially in the summer when the ingredients are always around and I want something light and fresh. It's one of those things that is more than the sum of its apparently simple parts. There's no recipe, but here's the basic idea:
1 cup of cottage cheese, but don't bother unless it's Breakstone or Michigan brand.
1 scallion, sliced
Maybe 1/3 a green pepper, diced
a similar amount of cucumber, diced
A sprinkling of fresh minced parsley
Lots of fresh ground pepper, a sprinkle of salt
Mix. Eat alone. (If you use a cup of cottage cheese, you can save some for later. You could even share with someone else.)

Other improvements: fresh dill or cilantro, diced red pepper. A big leaf of lettuce, quartered tomatoes alongside.