Appetite for Abundance

By Nancy Aronie - July 19, 2007

A friend of mine recently said my life seemed like a bowl of egg whites: It takes a strenuous beating, then ends up looking like whipped cream; and that I really do rise to every occasion. She was referring to a rough spate I was going through at the time, but I don’t think she knew of my connection to egg whites. I have a whites-of-the-egg-beating habit.

Whether random or due to some psychological explanation, here’s what I do with the egg whites. After I crack open three or four eggs (don’t even ask me what I do with the yokes), I add a bit of sugar, sometimes a pinch of cream of tartar and always a touch of vanilla. Sometimes when I’m patient I make peaks with the back of a spoon and bake it at 350 degrees until brown.

Other times when I a need immediate gratification I simply sit down to a big bowl of raw foam. I like it because it takes a long time to eat, I like the texture, it’s very filling and has about eight calories after you subtract what the exercise of the beating gives you.

As most interesting confessions begin (interesting in the way someone else’s dream is interesting), this one begins when I was a child. It’s possible that the meringue thing came from being born with a yearning for lemon meringue pie and never knowing how or where one could find such a thing.

Here I must refer to a passage written in 1982 from my recently deceased mother’s journal:

"Just had a very satisfactory realization. As I threw the empty Ritz cracker box into the wastebasket I noticed a carton from cottage cheese and a jar of peanut butter. I suddenly found myself smiling. I wondered why.

"Ever since I have had enough money to live on, I enjoy being able to replace food just because I can do it. During my married years, there was never that wonderful feeling. I used to worry about finishing food. If I didn’t eat something I bought within a day or two I was told I was wasting money.

"So now I’m not wasting money. I’m enjoying it. Thank God.”

I read that a few days ago, and after I cried and called my sister and after she cried we both agreed that this explains everything. Until reading my mother’s journal about how little abundance she had, it didn’t occur to me how much of that must have gotten passed on to me.

I always thought I just came into this life with food craziness. I used to eat hot dog rolls with mustard, relish, and sometimes ketchup. I would pretend there was a phantom hotdog grilled to perfection, nestled under all those condiments. I think kids have rich imaginations and coupled with everyone’s impressed reaction: Look at that! She doesn’t even need the meat.

When I got older we must have gotten a little freed up financially because we began eating in restaurants. The habit of substituting, however, had already taken hold. Maybe I just wanted to please my father by not adding to the bill because I would order a shrimp cocktail without the shrimp and be perfectly satisfied. I’d mix the shredded lettuce with as many oysterettes as I could squeeze into that little glass pedestal cup with then ask for extra horseradish to mix into the cocktail sauce. Somehow with the assurance of everyone’s focus on me I was able to imagine myself in mock shrimp cocktail heaven.

I’m not sure when the gourmet switch took place from Howard Johnson’s to L’etoile and Sweet Life, but as I grew up my tastes became attached to some indulgent must-haves.

Here’s a short list: Parmesan Reggiano, D’Avignon ninegrain bread, fingerling potatoes just because of the name. I have to have my whole-wheat pizza from the Chilmark store, strawberry shortcake from Lure, Mexican wedding cookies from Scottish Bakehouse, my Margaritas from Sharky’s, my portobello mushroom sandwich at Slice, my hot tollhouse cookies at Harbor View, my panna cotta at Détente.

I guess you could say I’ve grown past sublimating and substituting. I’m free at last, free at last. My pockets are full, I have gratitude and egg whites as my back-up comfort food, and I do it all in my mother’s memory.

Chilmark resident Nancy Aronie writes, hosts "Writing from the Heart” on Sirius radio, and conducts writing workshops.