A few days ago I was enjoying my ad hoc lunch of fried egg, tomato chunks tossed around in hot butter and, in lieu of toast, big croutons fried up with some leftover pesto. I was reading the paper and not really paying a great deal of attention to what I was eating, except to occasionally pat myself on the back for essentially pulling a mighty fine lunch out of my ass (yummy as that sounds), and even think of putting it on a pretty plate.
But when I got near the end, the last four bites or so, I had to put down the paper and concentrate.
I had to play my cards right here, to wind up with the perfect last bite. Just plain egg would be dull. Tomato and something would be nice and bright, but I also really wanted a last crouton crunch–but I didn’t want to get a dry part. It was too tricky to pile tomato on a hunk of bread, so I went with a small crouton bit, with pesto, followed quickly with the last tomato, dragged through the last of the egg yolk. I felt like I played it pretty well.
I do this last-bite calculation with pretty much everything good that I eat. Do you? Please tell me I’m not the only one with this particular obsession…
The “pretty plate” is so important!
All the best to Zora.
Parsley C.
It is indeed! Too bad it often falls by the wayside in the whole cooking-and-eating project, at least for me.
I also try to have a great last bite by making sure I have the most delicious elements of the meal ready for my last forkful. I was first made aware of this practice by Clotilde from Chocolate & Zucchini.
Huh. I guess if I read other people’s blogs, I’d already know I’m not alone!
Ha! That’s so funny, because just yesterday I made a _big_ omelette for breakfast, and my housemate and I split it, and we both commented to each other about how perfect our last bites had been–just the right proportions of cheese, mushroom, and egg–and how it’s difficult to tell in an omelette that’s closed if you’re squandering your last bit of cheese or not before the last bite, since it’s camouflaged.
AV–so true on the trickiness of an omelette! I think that’s an advance-level eating job, there. (Unless, of course, you’ve got an amateur-level omelette where the filling is visible…maybe that’s why my omelettes rarely look nice–I’m subconsciously sabotaging them so I can keep an eye on the fillings!)
And re: C&Z, here’s her post on the last-bite business, plus a whole lot of even weirder food habits. I’m kind of with her, but then maybe I’m not, because she went to so much trouble to break it down, when really, it’s the same principle over and over again: you want each bite to be well balanced, and you often have to eat the less-desirable bits first so you don’t get stuck with them at the end.
um, your mother does it — and congratulates herself when the balance is especially exquiste (which is most of the time)