And so our hero sets out alone 🎒

Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we dine alone, but not in loneliness. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.

Linguine with excessive amounts of parsley, butter and egg in solitude

Every night, in my kitchen.

Making the leap to live alone* during a pandemic can be scary. But it can also be deeply wonderful, I am learning, and have always suspected. I can fill my fridge with whatever I want, so I fill it with six kinds of tropical fruit, butter, and eggs. I can eat whatever I want for dinner, whenever I want, which turns out to be buttered pasta with an amount of parsley only I could love, and at 10pm. In the dark of the night I turn on Dinah Washington and set a small pot of water to boil with the biggest pinch of salt; throw in a bunch of linguine, and let it cook just to al dente. I fry many cloves of sliced garlic in salted butter; I rinse and dry the parsley. I add the pasta, piping hot to the buttery garlic and listen to it sizzle; I throw handfuls of chopped parsley in. I turn the heat off and add one beaten egg and stir frantically. I top it with flaky sea salt and enjoy something made for me, by me.

*Something I have long aspired to and planned for way before COVID-19!

Campari spritz in solitude

Make one for yourself this weekend!

Almost one year ago, long before the End of Times, I was sitting at a table for one at a little cafe in Trastevere. Sipping a spritz, I watched the chaotic beauty of the city unfold before me, as the sun set on top of Roman cobblestones. On dark days, I try to summon some of that magic back into my life, by making spritzes at home. They’re simple to make but taste complex; and are relatively low in alcohol but high in flavor. I like to combine half a can of Hi-biscus flavor LaCroix (or your favorite flavor of that Fancy Water) with two ounces of Campari and a dash of angostura bitters.

Wegmans frozen mandarin orange chicken at home

You can find this in the freezer aisle at Wegmans.

I meant to eat something healthy for lunch -- perhaps roast a little zucchini. But then I had to handle a mishap brought to me by the mess that is the American healthcare system, which, ironically, left me too tired and defeated to prepare anything leafy and green. So I dug into the freezer and found this bag of orange chicken. I can’t remember the last time I have eaten orange chicken. It must have been a decade ago, in high school, when I worked at a take-out restaurant, and the owner would send me home with leftovers. To my surprise, the frozen version is quite good and requires minimal effort (just a hot pan or oven), although, because it’s been a week of course the fire alarm went off twice as I was making it. Anyways, I recommend keeping some in your freezer for instant(ish) comfort food.

Rambutans at home

Shop Fair Supermarket, 42 Loisaida Ave, New York, NY 10009

A rambutan is like a lychee with trust issues. Encased in a thick, spiky fuzzy shell, its flesh is tangy and sour-sweet whereas the lychee is purely saccharine. A complex soul myself, I really enjoy rambutans; they might be slightly harder to crack open but once you do, it’s worth it (and absolutely addictive). You can find them for sale at most groceries and bodegas if you look hard enough; my favorite supermarket as of late is Shop Fair in the Lower East Side, which has produce that’s both fresh and cheap.

Epsom salt bath with lavender oil at home

A recipe for relaxation.

If you, like me, have had a perpetually clenched jaw since mid-March slash adolescence, please follow this recipe for yourself tonight. As someone who’s basically been anxious since the age of four, I’m no stranger to every relaxation tip on the internet, but somehow, along the way, I forgot about the humble Epsom salt bath. (Perhaps because I’ve always lived with people, so it seemed wrong to take a long bath in a shared bathroom.) First, obtain a big ole’ bag of Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate). You can get this at any drugstore, and you should pay no more than five dollars for a value-sized amount. Get the plain kind. Then, go home and rinse your tub really clean -- you don’t need to use harsh cleansers or sterilize it (after all, you yourself are not sterile!). Fill it with warm (not hot!) water and add about two cups of the salts under the running tap. If you’re being fancy, shake a drop or two of lavender essential oil, but make sure it won’t irritate your skin, first. Slip inside the warm bath and feel your muscles melt. (I always rinse after just to be safe, because I have every type of dermatitis known to man plus some that the doctors cannot identify.) Don a fluffy robe and moisturize well. 

XOXO,

Soph