First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

filed in Foodstuff

Here’s the Winner, At Last!

April 29, 2014 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Apologies for the delay in reporting the winner from our March contest, What’s Your Desert Island Food? America’s Test Kitchen, the publisher of Cooking for Two, had a shortage of copies, and I was waiting to get their go ahead. Thanks to all who let us in on your favorite foods. My mouth watered to read them.

It is with great pleasure and admiration that I congratulate RS, for his winning entry. The vivid tale of his Friday night ritual of a barbecue chicken sandwich made me smile deep inside, as I know it did for a lot of you. Well done, RS (or make mine medium)! 

RS:
I did not actually have to think about this one at all. I have a favorite meal. It is such a favorite meal that I have had it once a week for about 13 years, ever since I moved into my house. It will win me no mad respect from the haute cuisine crowd (though I do love the indulgence of a really artistic dinner at a fine restaurant once or twice a year). My favorite meal is far more proletariat than bourgie, but it is none the less perfect for that. And perhaps it is particularly apropos to explain to the readers of this blog, who are fellow single people, because my favorite meal has developed into a ritual of delight in my single life. It is my favorite meal, not so much because the food itself is necessarily head and shoulders more outstanding than any other food in the world (though it is *very* good), but because it is a centerpiece of a whole experience that maybe many here can relate to – that special space of time in the week that you can devote to totally indulging yourself – it is sort of my weekly date with me. And I find that I am a really outstanding date, if I do say so myself. I always show myself a really good time, and it is a time I never fail to deeply enjoy. When I was a young man, I felt pressure to always be taking maximum social advantage of weekend time. I felt that pressure we all know so well to “get out there,” and Friday nights were prime “singling and mingling” time. But here’s the thing. I am very much an introvert at heart and the pressure to “get out there and meet someone” often felt less like a spontaneous kind of enjoyment than another kind of work to do. Right around the time I moved into my house, I started being really OK with not forcing myself to go out and be social on Friday nights. Friday nights, we are tired, am I right? We have been working all week, battling the stresses of deadlines and difficult people/clients/managers, hustling to keep other people happy, and come Friday evening I generally far less in the mood for cleaning up, dressing up, and doing the high energy work of being social than I am for putting on my most comfy sweats and getting down to some serious relaxation to slide into the weekend. Once I started allowing myself the freedom to be happily single on Friday nights and let go of the need to go searching for a mate, I fairly quickly developed a beloved routine, my favorite meal, my Friday night date with myself.

Almost every Friday night is the same. On the way home from work, I rent one or two movies to watch on dvd or Blu-Ray. I get in the house and the comfy sweats go on. I go downstairs to my “rec room” (for lack of a better term – it is where my piano and large flat screen HD TV and Blu-Ray player are). If the temp is below 45, I build a roaring fire in the fireplace. If it the weather is warmer, I light a couple tapers so I can dine by candlelight. I get out the good cloth napkins and the good dinner plates. I may get out a wine glass, though I do not imbibe on date night (god only knows how I might take advantage of myself if I got myself drunk); the wine glass is for one part of the perfect end of the week meal – my ice cold coca cola. I *love* coke. Absolutely adore it. If I had to choose between coke and wine, I would happily kiss my last glass of pinot grigio goodbye. But, being a gentleman of a certain age who understands that drinking a lot of soft drinks is not good for you, I try to stick to drinking only water all week long. But Friday night I allow myself not one, but *two* cans of coke that are so cold they are on the borderline of forming ice crystals. Because it is Friday and I have made it through another week and it is good to be alive! And, as I think C.S. Lewis wrote somewhere , the things that make life worth living should not be valued less than the things we need to do to stay alive. Whether it was written by C.S. Lewis or not, I wholly agree with the principle! And then I pick up dinner. I order take out from a local chain sports bar/restaurant called Chammps. I always order the same thing: a barbecue chicken sandwich with waffle fries and seasoned sour cream. Does this sound totally uninspired, unexciting, routine, blasé and boring? Good! All the more for me! But I am telling you, it is pure comfort food. It is a nicely grilled chicken breast with a light coating of their own barbecue sauce recipe – the sauce has a wonderful smoky note. It is served on a large, lighty grilled sandwich bun, which I cleave in two with a Big Knife. I put my dinner plate in the microwave for 2 minutes to get it hot, and then I place all the food on the hot plate. I then add not one, not two, but three Claussen dill pickle halves to the plate (I used to favor Nathan’s dill pickle spears, but they became unavailable at my grocery store, and I have found Claussen are a good alternative). Finally, I sit down in my large recliner and pull my TV tray in front of me. The TV tray is set with dinner wear, cloth napkin, wine glass and candles. I turn off the other lights and start the movie and dig in. I eat conservatively throughout the week, always skipping breakfast, often skipping lunch, and keeping it simple with rice and veggies and a small amount of meat for dinner during the week. Come Friday night, though, I am King Henry II at table! After my week of “being good,” I dip that first great big salty waffle fry into the cup of seasoned sour cream (because the deep fried potato does not yet have enough fat in it, and if I have to explain this to you I am afraid we are just not grokking). The Chammps seasoned sour cream is out of this world. It takes french fries, which are already a 10 on my culinary scale, and explodes them up to a 15. I place it in my mouth the pleasure centers in my brain stem light up like a Christmas tree. I lift the glass to my lips and let the sweet coca cola fill my mouth. I may pause a moment, feeling it play and fizz on my tongue, and then I swallow with a sigh of delight. Then I may take a bite of the sandwich and receive the gift of the protein, the crisp accompaniment of the lettuce and tomato, and the subtle tang of the barbecue sauce. I chew like the carnivore I am and then move to take a bite of one of the cool, crisp garlicky pickles. And another wash of coke. And now another french fry dipped in seasoned sour cream. And so it goes. . .

Then, maybe a couple hours after dinner, the denouement: dessert. I have saved 3/4 of one of my cokes for dessert, and it is staying ice cold in the fridge until I am ready. When it is time (usually shortly after the second movie feature begins), I take my coke out and drink it with some cookies. My favorite dessert is usually a black and white cookie or a few of these: http://goo.gl/q3o0YY. Pim’s biscuits. It is a soft cookie (almost cake like – so not unlike a black and white cookie in that respect) with an orange filling and a chocolate coating. They are delicious.

So, this is more than *one* food item. It is a whole meal, and probably disqualifies me from the contest. But that’s OK. It is my perfect meal and I can’t pick it apart – all the components are needed for its perfection! I think I could live quite happily stranded on my island eating coconuts all week if I could have my special Friday night meal once a week.

Image from Designcrush

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