Meals, Stories and Recipes

A meal can tell a story. A meal has a beginning, a middle and an end. An appetizer: something to capture the interest and develop the appetite. The main course: to satisfy that hunger, to explore the setting and characters further. Dessert: to cleanse the palate, to resolve the tension introduced earlier. A play in three acts. And sometimes it’s just one big act: a single setting with everything rising and falling in a continuous sequence of action all over the stage.

(Which doesn’t take into account the epilogue: the putting away of left-overs, the washing of dishes, the last cup of coffee or tea or whiskey or wine while we talk some more and dry the dishes with a tea towel.)

And there are stories about other times those dishes were made: the people it was shared with, the weather that night, the little (or big) things that went wrong or miraculously right, the last-minute trips to the store. There are stories behind recipes about where they came from and how they’ve been modified over the years. There are stories behind other dinners, like the time pizza dough shot across the kitchen because it got tossed up into the ceiling fan. Some of the best stories told over dinner are about other dinners.

A recipe is a story we are told—a story we tell ourselves—about how something is made and what the result should be. But if a meal can tell a story, then cooking is the writing of it and a recipe is merely the setting. The players provide the action and the dialog. The real story plays out in the hours before, during and after dinner.