I have read Raymond Carver's book, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and I can say with authority that there is not a single lentil in there. There is an oyster house in the title story; there is a Caesar salad in "Fat;" there are popsicles and chips in "What's in Alaska?;" there is dog food in "Jerry Molly and Sam," cat food in "Neighbors," Spam and eggs in "The Student's Wife," and cigarettes and beer on every other page, but nary a lentil.
This is perhaps why the book is so full of infidelity and divorce: there are no lentils and certainly no cous-cous. Some kale may exist on the periphery of "What Do You Do in San Francisco?" but I doubt it. Fortunately for us, all of these things are on this blog! Thus, we can feel good about ourselves.
You see, we have been living on lentils for several days now. We do not live on donuts and champagne. Rather, we take some small pride in this fact. We find some comfort in this fact. On the days when we feel like one of Carver's ruined protagonists, we reheat some left-over lentils and put them into tacos. They go so nicely with hot sauce and shredded cabbage, we can walk upright, our heads held high in the air, just by eating them. Can't we? Can't we? Can't we?
2 comments:
leaving my first comment, i think i got you some new fans via rat-bones.
A french lentil is the only lentil for me!
That's not really so: for instance, when I want to make homemade veggie burgers, which I intend to do at some point, I may even make recourse to the red lentil, the squishiest of them all.
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