New Year's Eve 2012. New Year's Day 2013. This is my dinner: two clementines, three different kinds of crackers, a few slices of two-year aged white cheddar, and a small wedge of Brillat Savarin; followed by ginger snaps out of the box and somewhere between two and five small squares of medium dark chocolate with almonds and sea salt.
Should I have had this two days in a row? It was meant to be my single-woman celebratory New Year's Eve meal after a day of travel, coast to coast, door to door, with a stop at the grocery store in between. The Whole Foods in Brookline, MA doesn't sell wine, there was no parking at the little Russian liquor store, and I thought I had a bottle of white at home anyway. I did not. But no matter -- the meal was better without.
I alternated between different kinds of crackers, with slices of clementines in between. I had old school Wheat Thins (low-fat, as they give a better crunch), a long multi-grain and very thick cracker but just one, and a few round thin-as-wafers crackers from an exhorbitantly expensive box (where is the cracker aisle at the Brookline Whole Foods anyway? I picked these up in an act of desperation after searching the store twice; they were near the cheese, which I think accounts for the price tag). The round crackers could be mistaken for thin styrofoam -- or possibly Communion wafers -- if you briefly held them in your hand or glanced at them on a plate. But in fact they are quite perfect. They are first of all perfect in their imperfections in shape: not round but almost spoked like tires, with edges that a child could likely work off of in order to create an octagon, or maybe a dodecagon if she or he were very very careful. These crackers don't melt; they have more weight in the mouth than you might first think. I had imagined them as delivery systems for the Brillat Savarin, as I thought they would be delicate, barely perceptible beneath the cheese. And they were, of course, alongside the Wheat Thins and the multigrain one. As I experimented with combinations I found they also met the cheddar well -- the cheese holding almost the same weight as the cracker and having almost the same exact color. The other thicker crackers were also quite nice with the Brillat Savarin, which too surprised me. I had worried it would be overwhelmed by those wheatier crackers, but it held its own. I could taste the cheese as a separate thing as I crunched each cracker -- light as cream with the slight pungency of a brie yet sweet at the same time, growing softer (and creamier) as my meal progressed.
At this moment I am not sure what is better than this very very fancy cheese, named for the physiologist of taste. But eating it alone would surely be a great error in judgement. I don't mean like me-alone, single woman with dog on New Year's Eve, but alone without other tastes alongside it. Yet as someone who is alone, Brillat Savarin seems wholly appropriate. There are no worries about portions, no idle (or serious) chatter to distract from the moment of devouring it. (I did share bits of the rind with Arlo, who sat quietly beside me on the sofa, barely noticing my declaration that I would treat him as a king but rather seeming to expect it along with the cheese, which for once he did not beg for.) Of course the clementines also made sense as a companion -- the light punch, the refreshing bit of juice. And these clementines were quite perfect: I peeled each in one swoop so that I had two tiny empty oranges on my plate at the end. The ease of their rinds meant their texture was also just right -- not a dry slice in sight. But the ginger snaps were a revelation. Ideal as a follow-up to the cheese, the ginger at once cleansed my palette and filled it entirely with flavor. I admit: I started the ginger snaps two-thirds through the dinner so that I could share them with the cheese. The chocolate, though, came at the end, alternating with my last cookies. This particular bar has become my go-to chocolate: the chocolate itself is completely smooth, while the nuts add texture and the salt gives flavor to both.
In my past months of better eating, I ask again if it was the right thing to also begin the new year with this same meal. I determined it was not a symbolic act tonight, as it was last night. Tonight I ate it over again purely because it was delicious, with my experience of last night as a guide more than a crutch. Thus knowing the twists and the turns of this little marvelous meal tonight did not detract from my pleasure. The only difference was more in color. Last night an orange plate which marked the revelations and the brightness of the meal; tonight a deep red plate -- another celebratory color, yet for me also darker with experience. I finished my bar of chocolate (only two squares were left), and, for once, I read the little poem that graced the inside of the package, these lines in the middle:
Love coming is omnipotent indeed,
But not Love going. Let her go.[...]
Stevenson's lines give me hope for the future -- future loves, future tastes.
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