SPECULATING ABOUT DIET AS A ROMANTIC DETERMINANT

When someone's apartment mate makes a rather unsatisfactory bread pudding, just cut it into thin slices and fry it with butter. It will taste exactly like matzah brei, especially if you add fruit preserves. Having discovered that, I had a second helping, on Tuesday around tea-time.
While bustling around that morning, she woke me up to mention that she wasn't happy with how the bread pudding worked out. Perhaps not enough sugar, or missing some other key ingredient.


I should mention that even though she has her own room, because of the layout of the apartment, her morning about-bustling often wakes me up.
If I ever sneak a snoogums into the apartment (hah, miracles might happen!) who stays overnight, I shall probably end up in the middle of a three-way conversation. Both women will probably be wide awake, cheerfully exchanging notes about my many peculiarities, while I, the sleep-deprived person, make a valiant attempt to ignore everything and go back to sleep. Difficult under the circumstances. Women are more likely to bouncing with energy earlier in the day than men.
They're wild animals, they hunt for breakfast.

As I see it, sisterhood is powerful, and both the hypothetical snoogums and my apartment mate might discover that they have a lot in common.
More than either have with me.

One thing they'll probably do is decide on my new shared nickname.
In grammar school it was 'fried noodle dumpling' (bamibal), which to the childish mind replicated my actual name. Adult women are far more capable of pronouncing multi-consonant clusters than children.
As well as inventive, and way more daemonic.

What are his ticklish spots? What's his least favourite teevee show? What embarrasses the kadoodle out of him? Makes him cringe? Would you like a cup of gingery chocolate-coffee? Some toast and jam?
By the way, he hates breakfast. Especially the smell of frying.
You hungry? Wanna BIG plate of bacon and eggs?

Pancakes!

I am worried and disturbed at that prospect.
More than at the bad bread pudding.
After frying it was delish.


There were raisins in it. If you soak raisins and fry them, they can be added to rice pilaf. Along with nuts and zereshk, especially good in polo ba morgh and similar preparations. But they are also good in various Moroccan dishes, in lieu of or alongside prunes. Parsees might add apricots, and prepare a sweet-sour curry-type preparation.


A very dear friend, who seriously wants to see me in a relationship again, has said that my current living arrangements might problematic. As she put it, "you can't have two women sharing a kitchen, it just leads to trouble". Which is far too sexist a point of view, I think. It assumes that women cook, men don't. And if the future snoogums was indeed a cook, in all likelihood she'd already have access to cooking facilities.
Besides, that's MY kitchen.
I'm the cook.

Far more problematic is the prospect of two women sharing the same bathroom. My apartment mate is rather like a man, in that she doesn't leave hundreds of beauty products and feminine hygiene requisites all over the place higgildy piggildy. I think she'd be disturbed if all of a sudden such things cluttered-up the apartment.
As, indeed, would I.

Same goes for an excess of shoes.

We fear Imelda Marcos.



Quite the most important question -- more serious than the kitchen access and the lotions, unguents, depilatories, balls of cotton wool, and massive amounts of footwear -- is the issue of food. This blogger can only date omnivores. As both my food blog and numerous essays here will show, eating is as much about discovery and experimentation as it is feeding the beast. More so, even.

It's not a question of needing variety at the expense of everything else, but if I had to limit myself food-wise, it would only be a matter of time before I strayed. Eventually she'd find me with a mouthful of gehakte leber. Consorting with a bowl of chilipepper beef.
Mating bacon with tofu.
Stilton!

Peanuts, pecans, pistachios, pine nuts, coconuts, and walnuts; seeds, cheese, gluten, shellfish......

Fish paste, bittermelon, gailan, choi sam, gau choi, jit gwaa, dau miu.

Browned onions and bacon added to almost anything.

Did I ever mention chili peppers?


Obviously, these would not be present if and when a snoogums meets the person who lives on the other side of the apartment. But my only hope is that the aforementioned snoogums accepts them as important in my life.

Along with hot caffeinated beverages.

There's got to be a commonality.

It's just common sense.



On a different note, expect a recipe for zereshk polo ba morgh here sometime soon. It's yummy.




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