LJ Idol Week 11: Haute
Fancy food is complicated.
A few years ago, my dad and I were invited out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. I had won a scholarship from his work, and his bosses wanted to take us out to dinner and present me with a plaque. At first I was excited about the prospect of getting all dressed up and going out. We live fairly simple lives, but there are a handful of dresses hanging on a coat rack in the basement that I seldom get to wear. I love wearing dresses; the occasion just rarely arises to do so.
But, after picking out the dress-a floor-length, sleeveless one with flowers on it--at least two weeks in advance, I started to worry. We rarely eat out, and I can easily count the number of banquets and fancy dinners I’ve gone to.
And I couldn’t help thinking back to a banquet I had attended a few years earlier. And that salad. Oh, that salad.
It was my first banquet. My dad and I sat at a large, round table covered with a white tablecloth. I had already surveyed the table: glass of water, coffee cup, large cloth napkin, and multiple forks that I thought maybe I knew the uses for.
Then it landed on the table in front of me.
I love salads. But this salad was made up primarily of a quarter of a head of lettuce. Not cut up either. I had never seen such a thing before and hadn’t the first idea about how to eat it. The salads my mom makes are your everyday, normal salads: lettuce, tomato, cheese, olives, croutons, ranch or Caesar dressing. This, this was a giant chunk of lettuce surrounded by walnuts, some kind of berries, and feta cheese. What?
So it was that salad that kept coming to mind as I thought about what kind of food I might be presented with and would have to figure out how to eat at this latest fancy dinner. Over the years, I’d like to think that I’ve developed my blindness skills pretty well. But I somehow always find myself caught off guard at these fancy meals. The food we eat at home is simple. If it’s not finger food, it’s something that can be easily cut or just picked up with a spoon or fork. The bones in the fried chicken are about the only things that can’t be eaten.
But in these fancy restaurants there are all kinds of garnishes that I often don’t even know about until I’ve got them on my fork and have already taken a bite. I’ve accidentally bitten into a giant piece of kale that garnished one of my salads, and I remember with much amusement (only in retrospect, of course) the time my sister stabbed a piece of raw lemon with her fork and proceeded to take a huge bite, peel and all. I may have also launched a cherry tomato across a banquet table once, but I will admit to nothing.
At the fancy dinner with my dad’s bosses, it was shrimp.
I love shrimp, which is why I ordered them. There were two of them on the plate, each swimming in its own pool of some kind of thick sauce. They were giant shrimp, complete with tails. As I tried to focus on and contribute to the conversation around me, I was also trying to figure out how to de-tail the shrimp and then cut them into bite-sized pieces. They kept sliding around or getting submerged in the sauce. At home, when we have shrimp, they’re always part of a bigger pasta or casserole dish, and they always come without their tails (well, except for that one time, but . . .).
At one point, as I was just about finished battling with the shrimp, or so I thought, one of my dad’s bosses asked him, and not even in a whisper, “Isn’t she going to eat her other shrimp?” Apparently, there was a third giant shrimp, but it had gotten totally submerged in the thick sauce on the other side of the plate, and I had totally missed it. I did end up eating the other shrimp, but the result of his comment-innocent as it had been-was that now I knew they were in fact watching me. As I had struggled to figure out the shrimp, I had been afraid that they were, but now I knew for sure, which made me even more self-conscious.
When I eat, I like to be able to carry on conversations with the people around me. Unless I’m really hungry, I don’t like to focus on the food so much. Fancy food requires focus, though, unless I want a mouthful of kale or crunchy shrimp tail.
A few years ago, my dad and I were invited out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. I had won a scholarship from his work, and his bosses wanted to take us out to dinner and present me with a plaque. At first I was excited about the prospect of getting all dressed up and going out. We live fairly simple lives, but there are a handful of dresses hanging on a coat rack in the basement that I seldom get to wear. I love wearing dresses; the occasion just rarely arises to do so.
But, after picking out the dress-a floor-length, sleeveless one with flowers on it--at least two weeks in advance, I started to worry. We rarely eat out, and I can easily count the number of banquets and fancy dinners I’ve gone to.
And I couldn’t help thinking back to a banquet I had attended a few years earlier. And that salad. Oh, that salad.
It was my first banquet. My dad and I sat at a large, round table covered with a white tablecloth. I had already surveyed the table: glass of water, coffee cup, large cloth napkin, and multiple forks that I thought maybe I knew the uses for.
Then it landed on the table in front of me.
I love salads. But this salad was made up primarily of a quarter of a head of lettuce. Not cut up either. I had never seen such a thing before and hadn’t the first idea about how to eat it. The salads my mom makes are your everyday, normal salads: lettuce, tomato, cheese, olives, croutons, ranch or Caesar dressing. This, this was a giant chunk of lettuce surrounded by walnuts, some kind of berries, and feta cheese. What?
So it was that salad that kept coming to mind as I thought about what kind of food I might be presented with and would have to figure out how to eat at this latest fancy dinner. Over the years, I’d like to think that I’ve developed my blindness skills pretty well. But I somehow always find myself caught off guard at these fancy meals. The food we eat at home is simple. If it’s not finger food, it’s something that can be easily cut or just picked up with a spoon or fork. The bones in the fried chicken are about the only things that can’t be eaten.
But in these fancy restaurants there are all kinds of garnishes that I often don’t even know about until I’ve got them on my fork and have already taken a bite. I’ve accidentally bitten into a giant piece of kale that garnished one of my salads, and I remember with much amusement (only in retrospect, of course) the time my sister stabbed a piece of raw lemon with her fork and proceeded to take a huge bite, peel and all. I may have also launched a cherry tomato across a banquet table once, but I will admit to nothing.
At the fancy dinner with my dad’s bosses, it was shrimp.
I love shrimp, which is why I ordered them. There were two of them on the plate, each swimming in its own pool of some kind of thick sauce. They were giant shrimp, complete with tails. As I tried to focus on and contribute to the conversation around me, I was also trying to figure out how to de-tail the shrimp and then cut them into bite-sized pieces. They kept sliding around or getting submerged in the sauce. At home, when we have shrimp, they’re always part of a bigger pasta or casserole dish, and they always come without their tails (well, except for that one time, but . . .).
At one point, as I was just about finished battling with the shrimp, or so I thought, one of my dad’s bosses asked him, and not even in a whisper, “Isn’t she going to eat her other shrimp?” Apparently, there was a third giant shrimp, but it had gotten totally submerged in the thick sauce on the other side of the plate, and I had totally missed it. I did end up eating the other shrimp, but the result of his comment-innocent as it had been-was that now I knew they were in fact watching me. As I had struggled to figure out the shrimp, I had been afraid that they were, but now I knew for sure, which made me even more self-conscious.
When I eat, I like to be able to carry on conversations with the people around me. Unless I’m really hungry, I don’t like to focus on the food so much. Fancy food requires focus, though, unless I want a mouthful of kale or crunchy shrimp tail.