Reverse Culture Shock: ranting from a mad woman

So I made bruschetta.

And no one died.

No one complained either. I guess you could call it a success. But because there was pesto and spices, my teeth were peppered (literally) with little black specks.

No one told me, naturally. And because I might have added just a pinch too much garlic (I have this theory, and amateur culinary practice, that anything can be improved by adding more garlic), I noticed that no one would go near my mouth for days. Not that this is out of the ordinary, just that it would have helped. Again, with the specks. So it was a peppered success. Success peppered with… humiliation.

So I’ve decided to switch paths. I now sit in a nice little coffee place in college town, Ithaca. They are playing The Doors. The people at the table next to me are looking at post cards. I’m drinking a mug full of something called a Milky Way. And Jim’s voice is lulling me into a faraway time and place where I was looking at his grave eating a French baguette.

Must have been in another life.

I’m trying to remember the last time I ate bread. I’m trying to remember the last time I plucked my eyebrows. Some people say, you can’t go back home. Some people, like elderly Cornell Alum who I catered for over the weekend, say that bread should never be served without a toaster. Or fat-free butter.
I don’t know if I’m going to cut it in this business. But I remember, and it was when I made a caprese sandwich in my summer house. I put too much vinaigrette on the tomatoes, and it made the white sliced bread squishy. But I’m learning, slowly and surely. You just can’t go back home.

Until that day I had my caprese, I’d realized I hadn’t bought a loaf of bread since returning state-side.

What have I been doing for the last 3 weeks? I have become numb to the hunger for sweet and savory goodness. Which I just learned refers to meat.

Is it because America is filled with advertisements and appointments and complications that keep your mind from wandering to genuine, deep, inner core of our actual perceptions and emotions? And hunger?

Yes. Obviously.

So now that I don’t crave bread, I don’t know what I crave. I crave a life where I want to eat bread all day long. And stumble down a canal, or up a Spanish rooftop, or read my blog to an Irish ear.

Something out of a movie.

So about that crossed path. I want to learn how to bake. So I never have to buy a .79 cent of white bleached bread again.

But only for people that will alert me when my teeth are filled with pepper.