Chorizo and Eggs
Or Random Snapshot #2 from the Love and Gastronomy Digital Girl Album

This weekend, I happen to be dog sitting in Park Slope, Brooklyn for a loving black lab named Ozzie. He is sweet, and despite his gray whiskers and the arthritis in his old dog bones, he is still occasionally spunky.

Ozzie is good company, and spending time with him brings me back to my post-college days on the Central Coast of California when I dated a young Californian with an amiable hound who was a true companion. Sometime during those years, my brother gave me a mixed tape, which included Old King by Neil Young. That song still reminds me of the dog that used to ride around in the back of my California boyfriend's pick-up truck. Unfortunately, the dog had allergies that caused some serious dog-stinkage, which permeated the closed cab pick-up (or any space he regularly occupied) even when the dog was elsewhere.

More related, however, to the gastronomic point is that this reminiscing also leads me back to chorizo and eggs. One morning I sat in the kitchen at Cali boyfriend's parents house, eagerly awaiting the first meal ever cooked for me by a boy. I didn't even know what chorizo was, but it smelled delicious.

It was early in our relationship. I was young, happy, fascinated by California and eager to be in love. And the eggs and chorizo were just as wonderful and new as everything around me at that time.

I'm not sure how often I indulged in that favourite new dish at the time--probably enough for the new shiny-food smell to wear off. That's how it is. I over-indulge in new favourites to the point where the taste becomes mundane. It takes awhile, but it happens nonetheless.

By the time I was done with chorizo and eggs, I was done with California. I loved the coast, but each gulp of sea air was just like the one before it. I lived with it every day. I couldn't tell you anymore what it tasted like.

It was time for something completely different. I called a friend from college on a random afternoon and said, "So, I'm thinking about moving to New York." My theory was that one could continually reinvent oneself in a city the size of New York. And surely, there must be unending new tastes to be discovered. Seems to be that it was a good theory...

Comments

  1. Suddenly it's 1989 again. I'm in Taos New Mexico eating a breakfast burrito. That burrito shot me through to a heaven dimension. Divine. Divine. It had to be more than a burrito, everything must have been going my way at that moment, and that even could not account for how good that burrito was.

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