grilled goats cheese and mint sandwich
Leaving the Black Belt results in an overflow of food-related moments and the spending of slightly absurd sums of money on eating. Travelling via Atlanta to NYC for Thanksgiving, we haven't even had the turkey extraveganza yet and I'm already feeling overwhelmed by the possibilities for eating, and actually slightly nauseated by the overabundance of food - it's all too accessible, too easily bought rather than made oneself with effort and ingenuity making the unexpected out of the mundane. Shops heave with fresh vegetables, exotic herbs, every conceivable ingredient.
I eat roasted duckling in a restaurant where every dish contains at least eight or nine elements, not one or two and some clever seasoning. I eat sushi, which I have been craving for the last months, and it's somehow too normal, ordered by phone and delivered to your door. It's a huge treat but I feel slightly ridiculous making such a big deal out of it. We shop with friends for Thanksgiving trimmings in Fairways and I look at the piles of pak choi and french beans and the hordes of frenetic New Yorkers grabbing flat-leaf parsley, and think how absurdly lucky they are to have the money and the shops to spend it in on these items which are, quite frankly, luxurious. I have to grow my own flat-leaf parsley or rucola and I've obviously been in the South too long because I start to think that's the way it should be.
I eat roasted duckling in a restaurant where every dish contains at least eight or nine elements, not one or two and some clever seasoning. I eat sushi, which I have been craving for the last months, and it's somehow too normal, ordered by phone and delivered to your door. It's a huge treat but I feel slightly ridiculous making such a big deal out of it. We shop with friends for Thanksgiving trimmings in Fairways and I look at the piles of pak choi and french beans and the hordes of frenetic New Yorkers grabbing flat-leaf parsley, and think how absurdly lucky they are to have the money and the shops to spend it in on these items which are, quite frankly, luxurious. I have to grow my own flat-leaf parsley or rucola and I've obviously been in the South too long because I start to think that's the way it should be.
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