I’m not one to get my knickers in a twist over news reports, so when I started feeling oddly feverish and generally woozy the other day, I did not jump to conclusions about having Swine Flu. (Although one of my more hysterical colleagues nearly doused me with Purell when I announced I was going home.)
What is it about Springtime that does this to so many people? We get sniffles, colds, ordinary and undefinable malaise; we have to sleep, we have to take Advil, we get strangely misty for no reason, and suddenly, we crave baby food. Not baby food as in Beechnut; baby food as in “nursery” food–stuff that goes down easy, that’s simple to digest, that makes you feel safe, rather than sick and cranky, and that invariably turns out to be very inexpensive. In my house, we call this Pudding Time, which is what happens when Susan walks around carrying a blanket that her grandmother made about fifty years ago, settles down on the couch, and I ask her if she wants anything.
“Yes,” she sighs. “I think it’s Pudding Time….”
Once, when I lived in Manhattan and Susan took ill in my apartment after a very fancy and vertical meal at 5757, she instructed me to go get her some pudding, but the 24 hour Smiler’s grocery downstairs didn’t sell it prepackaged. I spied a commercial-sized vat of the stuff in the deli case next to a shrink-wrapped, boneless industrial turkey, and said to the small man who worked there, “I want that.” He sold the whole thing to me for ten dollars (not cheap, but large enough to serve twenty or thirty). Because when it’s Pudding Time, Susan has to have pudding, no matter what.
But Pudding Time is only a moniker representative of a universal situation; it can also mean that you want chicken soup with dumplings, or pastina, or some softly cooked eggs and buttered toast. On the flipside, though, and for reasons that I can’t fathom, I rose from my sick bed last night to make Steak Diane, which was a very bad idea indeed and does not at all fall into the Pudding Time repertoire. Generally, though, when I get sick or sad or my constitution just needs a little bit of love, my food of choice usually tends to be very spicy Indian food–often dal and rice, the former made from a divine recipe in Suvir Saran‘s first cookbook. I used to think this was very strange, but an Iranian doctor once told me that it made sense; turmeric is used all over India to calm colicky babies. Who knew.
Today, when I called my office to tell them I wouldn’t be coming in, they asked me, exactly, what was wrong. The question really forced me to think about it, and I realized that I’ve been stricken by far more than just a weird, flu-like illness that has turned my pallor green; today, I ran headlong into the very real, very chilling truth that not everyone understands the difference between agreeing to disagree, and hatred; and the fact that colloquial hatred–that pass-the-ketchup, dinnertime chat that results in it being okay for children to learn to hate people because they’re black/Jewish/gay/Muslim/short/tall/fill-in-the-blank–is all around us, all the time. On this day, I was saddened by the probable end of a long association that went belly up on account of peace and politics, orientation and anxiety, and lack of acceptance on the part of someone who truly believes herself to be something she isn’t. After a lot of time going back and forth, and talking and talking, I realized that there is a profound difference between saying that you’re something, and actually, really, honestly, being it. It’s like when the NRA says that they’re all for non-violence; or when Anita Bryant said she’s all for love; or when factory farmers say that they’re really treating animals humanely. But no matter what we say or do, or say and do, we have to remember that hate is hate is hate, that we all have to watch for it and monitor it, and just because we’re not immediately engaged with it, we cannot wash our hands of responsibility. Ever.
And so, it became Pudding Time for me pretty quickly. Funnily enough, I made that British favorite: soft-boiled eggs and soldiers, the latter of which is buttered toast sliced into pieces narrow enough to be dunked into the soft, delicately salted yolk. This was our pre-nap lunch, and after snoozing for a while, I felt well enough to think about planning dinner: it will be Jook–that rice porridge with chicken and green onions that has soothed the souls of millions. Tonight, that soul will be mine.
Soft-Boiled Eggs with Soldiers
Serves 1-2
4 eggs at room temperature
4 slices of good quality white bread
unsalted butter
1. Bring a medium saucepan filled with water to a boil. In the meantime, using a pin, poke a small hole in the wide end of each egg (this will prevent the egg from cracking during cooking). When the water is boiling, carefully place the eggs in the pan, cover, and set your timer for 4 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, toast the bread until golden. Remove, butter well, stack the bread, and slice lengthwise into 4 narrow “soldiers.”
3. Remove the eggs, place each one wide-bottom up in the shallow end of an egg cup (place the other one underneath it’s “skirt” to keep warm), and snip off the the top of the egg (I use an egg topper). Serve immediately, with kosher salt.
