It's not an experience, it's a meal

Friday's New York Times included an article about how it's no longer enough for food writers to wax rhapsodic over a genuinely delicious meal. No, writes William Grimes, that's too pedestrian. Today's reader, weaned on a steady diet of extreme sports and reality TV, wants food writers who dare to eat dangerously -- trying an ethnic delicacy that could prove fatal, for example, or downing as many hot wings as possible in 30 minutes. As Grimes puts it, "Cheap airplane travel, mass tourism and television, not to mention a horde of scribbling journalists, have shrunk the globe and placed absurd demands on anyone trying to deliver an exotic experience to readers. When everyone, either in person or through the Food Network, has sampled street food in Hanoi, what's left?"

The thing is, he's right. We've all been tricked into thinking that eating has to be a "dining experience," and that our experiences aren't authentic unless they risk, if not life and limb, at least nausea and cold sweats. Heaven knows I've been sucked into it -- hell, I started this blog with the idea of using it to inspire myself to eat more adventurously, and I'm far from what you might call a picky eater. It's embarrassing to realize that I've gotten sucked once more into the zeitgeist, fallen prey to the sad notion that a challenge is more worthy than a pleasure.

And so I will note for the record that on Sunday I ate a tiny chocolate-dipped pastry puff filled with zabaglione (custard flavored with marsala wine), nibbling it to make the "experience" last rather than succumbing to the temptation to pop it all in my mouth at once, and that it was not a challenge at all. It was simply a creamy, flaky, sweet, sensual pleasure.

What happens in Vegas stays on my ass

Last weekend I was in Las Vegas for my sister's wedding. No, it wasn't in a drive-through chapel. It was in a lovely outdoor garden at Caesar's Palace, the bride wore the requisite big white poofy dress, I carried a bouquet of lavender roses with my black chiffon cocktail dress, and the groom started crying halfway through the ceremony, which was just about the sweetest thing in the world. But enough about that; let's talk food.

Like everything else in Lost Wages, the food there is laughably excessive yet not what you'd call challenging. At various points in the weekend, my diet included:

• smoked salmon on rye bread with creamy dill sauce
• scrambled eggs and corned beef hash
• a Bloody Mary with two olives and a stalk of celery
• a Bloody Mary with no olives and no celery but a giant wedge of lime
• an enormous scoop of chicken salad with celery, walnuts, apples, and grapes
  
• seaweed salad
• a scary amount of boiled shrimp
• pasta salad with white beans
  
• a vegetarian egg roll
• manicotti stuffed with spinach and ricotta
  
• grilled filet mignon
• grilled antipasto
• orange juice near which a bottle of vodka may or may not have been waved
• cheesecake with a bit of chocolate sauce drizzled over the top
  
• the cutest little cannoli you ever did see, with eensy weensy chocolate chips on top (okay, okay, I had two -- what can I say, they were so small, one barely seemed to count)
  
• a stunning wedding cake that was both vanilla and chocolate in cunning stripes, with raspberry filling

Most of it was delicious. None of it was especially adventurous, other than in volume. All together, I ate more in three days than I ordinarily eat in an entire week. I came home feeling a little uncomfortable, both literally and metaphorically. I seriously considered subsisting on rice and miso soup for the rest of the week, but I rethought that plan once I realized it didn't allow for coffee.