Day 5 - Food

 FOOD

Prompt - Food : What's for breakfast?  Dinner?  Lunch?

"What'll we have for dinner?"

It's a recurring theme, an itch that won't be scratched, the annoying child that won't go away.  Almost every day one of us will ask it.  Knowing that neither has any immediate answer.  After decades of the same question arising, why are we still so bad at providing a confident response?

And then there's the "What did we used to eat?" approach, another phrase that makes me yawn with recognition.  It's true that there were a lot of dishes that rely on that no longer hit our table, since we gave up on eating most forms of meat.  But that's not much of a restriction, is it?  There are always vegetarian versions of old favourites, and fish is still very much on the menu.  There are cookery books in the kitchen bookcase, and a near infinite number of recipes available online.  We could easily eat something different every single day of the year.  So why is it so hard?

Inertia?  Laziness?  Lack of imagination?  A reluctance to make a choice that the other might disagree with?  Yes, yes, yes and yes.  Sometimes it's easy to go with the most basic of options - egg and chips; fish fingers and chips; pasta with a basic tomato sauce.  Of course there are nights when it feels like easy is best, for neither has the urge to spend much time doing the physical cooking bit of the daily chore.  

Yet I do, most of the time, enjoy cooking.  As a creative outlet, as a way of giving some focus to the transition for daytime to evening, as a validation of my culinary skills.  And to provide for my wife something I hope she'll appreciate.  There's love going into the chopping of veg and seasoning of a sauce.  Choices sometimes offer themselves up based on what's left over in the fridge, what needs to be used up if it's not to be wasted, or because a clear vision is there in one of our minds.  But too often it's a long drawn out slog to reach the decision, despite our constant promises to ourselves to plan ahead.

Contrast this potage of evening uncertainty with the simplicity of the morning.  There is variety, but only within a limited scope.  True, there's the very odd occasion when a cooked breakfast seems like a good idea, or for exotic (!) additions like croissants, but mostly the main components of breakfast are wholly predictable.

A bowl of freshly prepared fruit.  And something cereal based.  An Actimel drink.  With a glass of fruit juice to complete the ensemble.

The fruit will change all the time, depending on what's in season, what looked best, what's on offer.  There will almost certainly we some kind of berries (black, blue, rasp or strawb), or perhaps some cherries.  A few grapes.  Something citrus, most likely a satsuma but grapefruit is an occasional variation.  And two or three other items from a long list of possibilities - pear, apple, mango, plum, apricot, kiwi, nectarine and others that have slipped my mind.  Add some chopped ginger and it is frequently the taste high spot of the day.

The cereal, for me, switches between a heavily oat-based homemade muesli mix, and porridge (with salt of course - I am a Scotsman from the fifties).  Filling, sustaining, tasty.  

And it's that simple.  But adopt the same approach to the evening meal and it sounds boring.  Why is that?