There’s a lot of conversation buzzing around Disconnection in the Digital Age. Screens as walls between ourselves and those around us. Our cultural inability to form intimate, reciprocal human relationships. You know what I’m talking about. The antidote that most offer is—more connection! Dinner parties! Breaking bread with friends and strangers!
East Fork loves an over-the-top meal and an overflowing table. But today we want to extend an invitation to pull up a seat at a table set for one.
A cupcake in the bathtub. Delivery pizza on the couch. A warm meal at the bar of a neighborhood standby with a crossword for company. A Sunday spent alone at the grocery store, taking your time in every aisle, with a whole afternoon to prepare and enjoy—with no pressure to please anyone but yourself—a three-course meal inspired by a childhood vacation.
Our culture's growing obsession with health and wellness is so often body and class shaming dressed up in a gown of moral righteousness. It can all be so hard to navigate. Eating alone is a great time to work on unlearning the harmful stories that our classist, image-obsessed, society has been whispering in our ears and jamming down our throats all our lives. It's a great time to practice saying things like:
"I'm eating this cake alone because it tastes so damn delicious and I just wanna savor it" instead of "I'm eating this cake alone because I'm bad and can't help myself."
or
"I'm eating this big, raw salad alone because it's delicious and nourishing for my body" instead of "I'm eating this salad on my Instagram feed so that people will know that I'm good and disciplined and virtuous."
An image of someone eating alone can shout: Shame! Depression! Isolation! But flip the narrative and eating alone can provide us with the opportunity for a connection with our own, personal, corporal humanity in a way that eating in the company of others can't.
I'm on my phone all day every single day for work and, of course, I can feel how it disconnects me from those around me. But more than anything, it's disconnected me from myself. It's stripped away my comfortable, easy relationship with solitude I've spent a lifetime developing. Eating alone used to be my church—truly, the time I felt most connected to the whole damn universe. I still enjoy it, but lately when I'm eating alone—whether in a restaurant while travelling for work or at home, before the kids wake up—I find myself aimlessly scrolling through Instagram, hardly aware of the food in front me and my own experience of it. Anyone else feel that? And since I've developed this habit and stopped paying attention to my senses while I eat, I've noticed that this negative self-talk I thought I'd gotten rid of for good back in my early 20s has started to weasel its way back into my sub-conscious. I'm ready to reconnect.
In the comment section below, tell us about a time when you enjoyed a meal or a snack in your own company. A time when you were really, truly present with your own taste buds, desire, pleasure, humanity.
“When I was writing my thesis in college, I would go get sushi by myself at the end of a long week. I'd blast my sinuses with Wasabi to clear some stress. All the sushi chefs and staff knew me and when they found out I studied Japanese, they started giving me a couple free pieces of fish every time I went in.” - Julia True
"My favorite thing to eat when I'm all alone is oxtail. I can make it, but it's way better when my grandma or mom does. I like to share food, but not when I'm eating oxtail. That's all mine." - JaQuan LaPierre
“Seriously, while it is more fun sharing a meal with the one you love, New Haven style Pizza can be great with a group or all by yourself!” - Scott Haight
“I once trekked across London to eat banana pancakes at a specific breakfast spot. I was the only person in the restaurant eating alone, but I didn’t mind: what better way to enjoy your own company than with a delicious meal?” - Virginia Knight
“In the late afternoon half way through my trip [to Paris] I ordered a Croque Monsuier (white sauce cheese and ham--a glorified fried bologna sandwich) wrapped to go after a long night and perhaps a few too many Kronenbourgs. Plucking it out of my tote (still warm!) on the steps outside of le Petit Palais was a fabulous reminder to take comfort in solitude.” - Sara Melosh
“There’s nothing better than eating a big bowl of cereal in absolute peace and quiet or when watching YouTube. It's perfect quick snack fix, second only to PB&J.” — Jerome Williams
30 comments
Cooking has been the sweetest reprieve for me. After a few traumatic experiences when I was 19, I dove into cooking as a subconscious way of healing myself. I wanted— nay, needed— to feel again. And I needed to feel deeply. I needed to find comfort, sovereignty, relief in my body. I needed complete and utter deliciousness and nothing less. Cooking and food was that outlet for me.
I spent a lot of time driving and hiking along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the following years. One day, I drove to Calloway Peak. I was 20 at the time. My hiking bag was full of farmers market peaches and gorgeous buttercrunch lettuce, a fresh loaf of sourdough bread, a granny smith apple, and raw goat cheese from the farm I was working at. It was the middle of the week in the summer, but I had the trail to myself. I got to the top and my mouth dropped at the surrounding beauty. Valleys of trees and peaks of granite crescendoing into gorgeous waves and waves in the sea of mountains in front of me.
I sat down and pulled out the food from my bag and gingerly made myself a sandwich. I artfully swirled the goat cheese on the slices of bread (yes, I cut the bread with a swiss army knife I’d brought along), slowly cut the granny smith apples into slices, and put them onto the sandwich with the lettuce for the sandwich. I took as long as I could to enjoy the preparation and simple power of a good sandwich. It was so fresh— I took long, hearty, pleasurable chews. I don’t think it’s ever taken me that long to eat a sandwich.
I finished my hiking lunch, taking big gulps of water as I stared out at the sky. As I sat on that mountain top in silence, with nothing but the wind blowing around me, I started to cry. Uncontrollably. I’m usually not one for crying but big, heavy drops just kept coming. A huge smile took over my face through the tears. Something deep inside of me shifted. Clicked into place. This stranger who’d been myself was starting to form into someone else that felt more clear, more real, more me than the voided version I’d been carrying around. A simple sandwich after an afternoon hike brought me out of the murky void I’d been sludging through. I powerfully felt in my bones the strength to nurture and nourish myself, to tend to myself the way I tended to the plants on the farm— softly, sensitively, and with nothing but heartful intention and prayers to grow beauty out of dirt.
I began the trek back down the mountain, feeling fullness and resilience and joy for the first time in a year. I stopped at a waterfall and swimming hole on the way back. I pulled out the peaches, took a big ol’ bite, then another and another, letting the juices freely flow down my face and hands. I skinny dipped in the cool mountain water, hearing the slight roar of the waterfall as I held my breath underwater. More tears, more smiles, more joy joy joy as I floated on my back in the little swimming hole, the taste of sweet summer peaches still in my mouth.
A sandwich on top of a mountain and peaches near a waterfall marked a turning point in my life. It’s easy to overlook the small things, but this day helped me realize that the simplest pleasures— things like the breeze, a good piece of bread, ripe summer fruit— are true gifts and cause for celebration. My body and spirit felt renewed, safe, almost overflowing. I felt deliciousness and nothing less that day.
I have always had some weird aversion to paying for salads out, internally telling myself that if I’m going out to dinner I want to spend my money on something I can’t just make at home. Folks, I do not make life changing salads at home, and so I don’t eat enough salad. A month ago I took myself out for a lunch date to the Waterbird to sit alone at the bar, in the middle of the day, drink water, and eat an incredible kale caesar salad. I smiled my way through the entire salad, thinking “I’ve made it!” Luxury can feel so different for all of us. While I would never hesitate to order a dozen fresh oysters for myself, my recent salad moment was a really big deal.
My first marriage ended very abruptly and at a fairly young age, I was 31. I suddenly found myself living alone in a tiny apartment and paralyzed by the fear of judgement from my family and friends that I wasn’t capable of being “marriage material”. I wasn’t eating well, because I hadn’t figured out to eat alone. One night, after spending the entire day trying to put years of marriage and stuff into this tiny apartment, I decided to make Risotto. I ate it in my bathtub that night, and I swear that Risotto tasted better than any I had ever had. I stopped worrying about the optics of that divorce that night. Probably in part due to what a big bowl of carbs can do for the soul.
I was traveling alone in Barcelona as a young 20-something. I wasn’t about to skip a wine and tapas bar experience in Spain, even if I was alone. I scouted out a friendly-looking yet intimate spot. I squeezed myself between 2 couples at the bar and ordered in my much-less-than-perfect Spanish. Even though I was alone, the small size of the restaurant and the friendliness of the staff made me feel like I was dining with a group of close friends.
When I was 17 I had the privilege of going to Italy with my art history class. We went to a museum and I wasn’t ready to leave when the group left, so I told them I’d meet up with them later. I had mostly learned my way around the area, and I found a little sidewalk cafe where I had a coffee and lunch while I drew strangers in my sketchbook. I couldn’t believe I was allowed to be alone, so I relished every moment of my solitude. Drinking coffee alone while covertly drawing strangers in public remains one of my favorite activities to this day.