- Instant Ramen, and: Consommé, and: The End of Meat, and: Everything That Can Be Eaten
Instant Ramen
Because the house was conceived by an architectwho hadn't cooked his own meals,the box dwelled vertically in the broom closet
whose shoji panels, designed for elegance,slid aside to reveal a space so narrow,our perpetual case of Sapporo Ichiban
shouldn't have fit. Yet the supply seemed infinite,taking care of all who came home hungry,broth, an egg, a handful of spinach giving it
dignity enough for a meal or a bridgeto a meal. It soothed us as children,sick or well. Always there on short notice,
it saved us from takeout, saw both parentsthrough days of grading and bills,weekends of yard work. Neither junk
nor an emblem of struggle, it made no one fat.Later, when I met it in public, saw it mocked,I wanted to defend it, show it decked out
with Napa cabbage slivers, nori flakes,bright green peas, but was taken aback—less by the commonness, more by the disdain, [End Page 98]
as if ramen were a stage one grows out of:mythic years of cooking on a hot plate,studying late, not having found true love.
I am ashamed to say I did not stand up.I let everyone mock it, even mocked it myself:grease with a side of msg. I forgot who I was,
young and hungry, sliding aside the shojiin search of transformation,in search of energy.
Consommé
would have routed mein the spelling bee
if the otherkiller speller
in seventh gradehadn't had a grenade
lobbed at him,too. I've forgotten
his word but still feelthe shifting floor of betrayal
by this one, whichassumed fine French
restaurants or a motherwith the leisure [End Page 99]
to delve into Julia Childor a father who required
broth clear enoughto read through,
never mind how much fleshbecame garbage.
Who among uswas building rafts
in stockpots out of meat,egg whites, and leeks
purely for transparency?Why were they asking me?
In 1979, broth was canned.I was beginning to understand
why strangers were taking to seain crowded dinghies.
During dinner each night,good Walter Cronkite
told stories of the saved,their faces far away
and near, the connectionbetween my Campbell's Chicken
Noodle and their hungerunclear, but a certain danger. [End Page 100]
To waste no food was a given,whatever its origin.
Reading was permissibleeven at midnight, even at table.
Thus I could spell almost anythingbut not a word of haute cuisine.
The End of Meat
While Red-Cooked Meat dishes consist of big pieces in three dimensions, dishes using Meat Slices (remember meat means pork?) consist of meat mostly in two dimensions . . .
As Meat Slices have one dimension less than the pieces of Red-Cooked Meat, so Meat Shreds have one dimension still less than the Slices . . .
Now we are ready to cut meat down one dimension more and that is the end, because we call it jou m'or and mo is the word for "end."
buwei yang chao, How to Cook and Eat in Chinese
It is only Chapter Four, and we have reached The End of Meat.Lately civilization has seemed to be at The End of Meat, or near it.Many thoughtful and educated people, citing health, the environment, or the rights of animals, have given it up.Others have renounced it when grain-fed, laced with drugs, and/or raised in a feedlot.Some describe themselves as vegetarian, but make exceptions for bacon.Science is trying but has not perfected the raising of meat in labs, to remove slaughter from the process.
Thus "The End of Meat" sounds contemporary, but this book is seventy-one years old, its founding language at least six thousand. [End Page 101] By "The End of Meat," it does not mean not eating meat. It means eating meat in zero dimensions.Mo, in my Chinese-English dictionary, means "tip, end; nonessentials; last stage; powder, dust."Thus meat's final stop. Unimportant meat. Powdered meat. Meat...