Hunger, or The Art of Living

It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it … and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied … and it is all one. 
                                                                                                                                        —M. F. K. Fisher, The Art of Eating 

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As you can see, I've been delving into old favorites for reading these days.  Unpacking books a few weeks ago, I recovered ones my eyes once glazed over, so long have they been on the shelf.

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher's fine essays and stories always center around food, but they aren't only about what we eat.  Whether we eat to live, or live to eat, nourishment means so much more than food, she illustrates. It's a lesson that these last few months have made us learn, as we re-evaluate everything of worth...what and who we live for, what sustains us, and also the world, essentially.  

My friend Katharine, in her early nineties now, isn't, thankfully, without daily help to shop, do errands, clean around the house, but somehow even she, a woman who, I have always known, eats to live rather than the opposite, seems to see the certainty of dinner as the polestar of her day.  "I get up every morning," she told me on the phone from San Antonio, "pull myself together, and first thing go down to the kitchen to see whether there is anything for supper."

My mother, still at the breakfast table, used to ask whoever was in hearing, "Now what are we having for dinner?"  Sometimes we'd blink our eyes, bemused at that question so early in the day.  But since no one could accuse anyone among our family and friends of eating only to live, food for the day naturally seemed her organizing principle, too.  And no wonder, considering the uncertainty of number and tastes she would be feeding.  Anyone could, and did, drop in.  She and her generation grew up in the Great Depression, when a kind cousin had a farm and would share their produce; still, some days they ate oatmeal for supper, she would tell us.  (I wonder whether they complained?)

Though we are no longer in  quite so dire a depression, my cousin Barbara mentioned the other morning that she'd made baked oatmeal for breakfast, because the Cheerios box was empty, and she wasn't about to risk the supermarket just for that.  The grocery, even the smaller markets, are places we go now only at getting-to-dire need, first dressing in hats, gloves, and masks.  Some of us can order ahead for delivery; for that, however, you have to keep your fingers crossed that you have charted your needs correctly for the next few weeks. 

For those of us brought up to cook and serve whatever is on hand, being out of one's usual cereal isn't a big deal (and surely, baked oatmeal is no mean substitute, even for dinner).  We know how to make do, as our mothers and grandmothers, ad infinitas, did.  It's especially useful for the ad hoc way we need to live our lives these days to remain healthy and productive.  But Barbara's mother, our Aunt Sadie, is staying with her now, plucked out of her locked-down senior apartment before the Covid-19 virus could reach her from down the hall.  So she has an even greater reason both safety and nutrition concern her.  

davidlebovitz.com

As it happened, the same morning found me wondering (in a turning-into-my-mother moment) what we could have for supper...lemon risotto, shrimp, meatballs for Alexander who doesn't do shrimp, avocado and ? ? salad...  But like Barbara, I'd be working with what was already on hand. That risotto, the thought of which actually began in an email from David Lebovitz, his Citrus recipe using grapefruit and lime, had to be adapted to the lemons I had instead.  (It turns out that Lebovitz had to adapt his citrus ingredients, too, so we're square.) 

Plans, of course, change (another thing our mothers knew).  Joseph, coming in the door, reminded me that it was Cinco de Mayo, so he thought we ought instead to have...tacos!  Fortunately, he had the major ingredients at hand, since I somehow missed a chance to order this week from Goodness Cooks, two young women who make wonderful fresh, local, organic foods and had a perfect menu for the day.  

Alexander whipped up a batch of pina coladas (sin rum) to toast with...he knew the recipe.  We cut out flags.  The risotto will wait for another hunger.  That's life, too, as Mrs. Fisher means it...the fine reality of hunger satisfied, injected by more than necessity, that siren song of celebration or season.

Goodness Cooks' Triple Radish Salad

But what happens when even the mother of invention can't come through?  When not only Cheerios, but the stuff of any meal at all is missing?  Then both nourishment and the spirit fade.  And lots of other things, like a family's health, the ability to keep a job, to keep children able to learn, and a roof overhead, a safe home.   Hunger is at the root of so many things we take for granted.  But it's not something confined only to our kitchens.

Debbie Horwitz, PORCH Chapel Hill food sort, Covid-19 version

I am thinking that the prime intimation of Mrs. Fisher's quote is that we need continually to find ways to help nourish the community around us who are in more need than we, while we keep ourselves and them safe, too. Security matters. Health matters. Care for others matters. Sharing, as much as self-preservation, matters, because it is self-preservation, especially when the usual isn't the usual any more.  That ought to be something born or bred into us.  It's difficult to see, as we look at and listen to the sometimes petty, often selfish, and too often xenophobic complaints about the way we need to live these days, why it's not.