Who knew from Mexico whilst being brought up in the Monopoly board
burbs of Southern New England in the fifties? It seemed a very distant
land – exotic, fantastic – as foreign and far away as California. The
word Mexico called to mind jumping beans, dancing with sombreros,
"Z's" slashed midair, Cisco and his humble sidekick Pancho galloping
away, Pancho Gonzales slamming a tennis serve, Speedy Gonzalez slamming
a cat — a lot of really speedy stuff. It's no wonder I thought the
Mexican peoples only ate fast food.
I was growing up in the miraculous new age of instant gratification
grub. Chinese food, pizza, take out burgers, and foods hunted and
gathered from pouches and frozen boxes were America's new staples. New
sorts of consumables were purchased by my parents weekly. I recall my
first corn products off a cob – daffy yellow corn chips crunched hand
over fist in front of the television console, lumped into a large
category called "snacks." Anything one ate away from the dinner table
and consumed mindlessly, endlessly, with no silverware, that soiled
your fingers and "ruined your appetite" was a "snack." So when I
visited California in seventy-two and experienced Mexican food at a
party for the first time, corn chips dipped in a tasty chartreuse
paste, it continued to seem "snack," and not to be taken seriously.
It all started with my Mom’s 1/2 gal of dill pickles 40ish years ago....I was always facinated with the glass jar itself, the settling of spices in the bottom and the beauty of how the small cucumbers were so artful and lovingly arranged. Our Mother could cook like an angel inspired by Julia and the Time/Life series to guide her. Everyday of the week she watched and read and plotted and planned for the weekend. 
I had never heard of M.F.K. Fisher until I started working at One for
the Table. She was/is apparently one of the most famous food writers of
the last century. I rarely read about food, only branching out
occasionally to pick up Gourmet, Food & Wine or Cooking Light
depending on what recipe was featured on the cover. In recent months I
discovered I was one of the only ones not familiar with her work,
because her name kept popping up in various pieces on this site as one
of THE people everyone consulted when it came to enjoying good
food. Finally, intrigued by her reputation and tired of reading murder
mysteries, I decided to see what all the fuss was about...and found a
new friend.
Eating alone is a trying thing for some people, writing cooking and eating off
as products of a banal bodily necessity. I love to eat and cook alone,
using the kitchen as an improvisational laboratory to experiment with
recipe ideas, flavor combinations, and cooking techniques. MFK Fisher,
a witty food writer with a fluid, deeply expressive writing style
bursting with gastronomic knowledge, shared my passion. She was one of
the best food writers out there, blurring the lines between the genres
of food anthropology, ecology, travel literature, and cooking.
sums up her point of view. “It took me several years of such periods of being alone to learn how to care for myself, at least at
table. I came to believe that since nobody else dared feed me as I
wished to be fed. I must do it myself, and with as much aplomb as I
could muster.” In regards to eating alone, I have taken a page from her
book, and as a result treat myself to lavish meals regularly.
There are times when I scrutinize my outfit before I leave the
house, and find it absurdly, compulsively over-accessorized. It’s
then, as I grab my keys and prance out with red sneakers, mismatched
bracelets, and a brooch shaped like a turnip, that I’ll find myself
thinking of her. Subtlety, in many things, is often advised; but I,
heeding Anne of Green Gables, rarely listen. If at a dinner party,
after I’ve gone on and on to someone about a book they’ll probably
never read, ignoring every attempt they make to escape me, she’ll just
appear in my mind. And often, when faced with a moral dilemma, like
whether to leave the last bite of pie for the person I’m sharing it
with, or to request that my upstairs neighbors stop rollerblading on
the hardwood floor, I’ll ask myself: