Staple diet (original) (raw)
footpad twitchy
March 3 2010, 20:49
When I was at university, I went for something like a year basically living on brown rice, fish, onions and bananas. That's not to say I didn't eat other stuff too—my diet was balanced and healthy enough, but that was my staple, my regular meal. I was happy with it. Each day I'd cook up a big pot of rice, sauté some onions and cook them into a sort of sauce with some milk, and get some cod or smoked haddock out of the freezer and braise that on top of the onions, and I'd eat to repletion. I don't remember ever tiring of it, and if I did then I'd just cook something else. Good times.
These days I have a different staple: ratatouille. It's as simple and pleasant a routine as one could wish: pick up a big bunch of vegetables from the supermarket and cook them up of an evening with garlic and black pepper and herbes-de-Provence, then divide the stew into Tupperware boxes and put them in the fridge. Then for days afterwards I reheat a tub of ratatouille, cook up some white rice (because I'm too disorganised and lazy to sort out brown), and eat it with some feta cheese. The sharpness of the cheese beautifully complements the sweetness of the ratatouille; the rice gives it all body. It always tastes good and I never lack appetite for it. With salad for lunch at work most days, I dare to say that my diet is as good as it needs to be.
And I'm not thinking so much about hurt and sorrow, which must mean that I'm pulling out of the depression. I've noticed changes, too—my jaw didn't hurt this morning from being fiercely gritted all night, and I'm no longer panicky at work. Best of all, the sick irrational turmoil of fear is fading from my belly, which is nice because I was surely headed for an ulcer otherwise. It ain't good yet but it's sure as heck better.
I'm really very lucky to live in this time. Fifty years ago I'd have been classed as a poor melancholic, doomed to failure under the weight of my own lassitude and despair, never understanding how the blue skies of my life darkened to frozen deathly grey. Not that I understand now either, of course, but I have a partial defence. Forty milligrams with food each morning, and after a week or two the millstone lifts from my chest and I can begin to breathe again, to recognise the person I am, to leave this tortured stranger behind and get on with being me. It's like light in the darkness.