LJ Idol Week 6: "Food Memory"
A white awning spread over the open-air dining room of a restaurant I'd heard called “the pizza place.” Brigade members had already covered a table with drink cans and plates of something fried. The waiter, in a stained white apron, calmly pulled up another table and more chairs for Peter and me. It seemed the kind of place one could stay all day.
While the assembled complained about their fatigue and the brutal heat, Peter and I deciphered the menu. On the first page, where we expected to find appetizers, we saw a word we couldn’t guess at: Isca. It translated as “bait.” We agreed to stop.
Peter told me this restaurant served a buffet that our group had never eaten. It's safest to eat hot foods hot and cold foods cold because anything that sits long enough to reach ambient temperature risks becoming infested by something. Consensus among the trip veterans was that pizza would be the safest food here because it didn't sit around. Nobody recalled ever having been offered the buffet. Nobody recalled ever having gotten sick from eating here, either. We figured the staff knew we were weak-stomached North Americans in need of only the safest food and took pride in their track record.
Peter and I split a “California” pizza, topped with what we thought would be fruit. Sure enough, we got steaming chunks of abacaxi, ameixa, and pêssego-pineapple, prune, and peach-on a blanket of white cheese that lapped over the sides of a crust twice the size of a frisbee. Unfortunately, on the blanket also lurked round, pink slices of meat that looked like Canadian bacon.
Twenty-two years had softened my vegetarianism to the point that I ate meat on occasion; that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I keep kosher. I don’t eat meat with dairy, and I never eat pork, which this probably was. I’d come to kashrut during my twenties as a concrete way to acknowledge my relationship with God. I consider religious choices private, so I’ve never imposed this choice on others, not even on Peter, who is also Jewish. I don't worry about God "punishing" me for eating treif (non-kosher food): I think God cares more about people starving than about what they eat. But my fiance and I were sitting in front of a pizza with pig on it, and his friends were checking out our compatibility.
If I picked off the meat, my private choices would become public to strangers I’d be living with for three weeks. Worse, Peter would have to decide whether to pick off his. If he did, his friends might tease him for being "bossed around." Lastly, ought I turn down the chance to try something I’d never eat back home, prepared by people who probably took pride in their making it safe for me?
The pizza steamed on the table. We had to eat it before some microbe moved in.
Peter and I both reached for slices. We didn’t pick off the meat. It was delicious: thick and salty, harmonious with the plump, sweet fruit.