Getting Back to the Table, Part I

So in one of my last posts I described how I've had a hard time savoring food lately. I spend far too much time thinking/worrying how a food will make me feel or how it will affect my carbon footprint and too little time thinking of how it tastes. Well, before I even had a real chance to deal with that, my situation got worse. It seems that my cerebral way of dealing with food has infected the time I spend dining with others.

You see, no one wants to eat with me anymore. I've become one of those hippy vegan types that, to quote a friend, "gets upset when someone else has already brought the kale and quinoa salad to the potluck." I was unaware of how bad it had gotten until the same friend described a recent visit to a local sushi restaurant. Apparently, while she attempted to enjoy her burdock tempura roll (which I have enjoyed myself in the past) I made several negative remarks about the amount of white rice in the meal and lamented the absence of brown rice sushi at local sushi restaurants.

Of course, what I meant was that, in my case eating lots of white rice makes me feel sluggish and irritable and I, for the benefit of myself and others, choose to have brown because it makes me feel better than the white. But by pointing this out it sounds like, in my opinion, anyone who wouldn't choose brown rice is making an inferior decision. Either that or all my talk about the physiological and psychological effects of food really takes away from the enjoyment of the food itself.

So, in a manner not unlike exhibiting my ability to sit with the adults during family gatherings when I was a child, this weekend became all about proving to myself and others that I could be invited back to the table...