The Dilemma Of Remorseless Pleasure, By Mara L.

Perhaps culinary survival for an expatriate in New York is after all possible, and there might even be a bright side to it. Isn’t it true that you, like all Italian gourmets, used to live with a conflict between the two major values in your life?
(1) Be thin.
(2) Eat great food.

So, for the past 30 years of your life (1) had to be sacrificed. Not completely, for Milan you look quite ok, and in London people actually think that you are thin. But not so in Paris, and certainly not in Manhattan. So, if (2) enjoyed its rule for 30 years, why not, for a change, let (1) rule for the next 30 (or perhaps three) years? Decide that starving actually has its advantages. You will be thin. You can eat as much as you like when you go home to Italy. Since you are here most of the time, even limitless indulgence over Christmas and the summer holidays is not going to hurt.

However, here’s the rub: In the 30 years of the rule of (2), (1) wasn’t simply given up on. Recall, you did manage to meet the relaxed standards of thinness in northern Italy. Giving precedence to (2) doesn’t mean that you stop caring about (1) (and the other way around). So what about (2), eat great food, while you are here?

This is what my entries to this blog will be concerned with. Like a pig which finds truffles in the deepest forest, I am running through New York, stopping at the faintest smell of something tasty. No matter how much I find, it will be little enough to stay thin. Thus, this is the time of remorseless pleasure.

Coming up: Fruit Tarte in New York