Project Emily Advent: Day 8
Describe your favorite meal.
My favorite meal is a charcuterie board. Brie drizzled in honey, grapes and rosemary. Preserves and sliced pear, salami and cashews. Dried fruit and olives, small pickles and fresh berries. Delicate prosciutto, burrata, figs. I much prefer baked bread to crackers, a baguette being the best choice. I love the servingware that usually accompanies a board, (you guessed it) tiny spoons and spreading knives and bowls of preserves. I love the elegant way it comes together, making me feel very mature and grown-up, even though it is actually not very unlike our childhood Lunchables. A charcuterie board almost looks like a piece of art, different each time, arranged with a fierce dedication to the beauty of it.
I love the communal aspect of it. The way that it brings people together. We sit closer, leaning over one another to reach for an almond or the last slice of manchego. Reaching for the apricots at the same time as someone else, brushing fingers in a way that is either painfully awkward or heart-flutteringly romantic, or both. I can imagine this sort of meal is a nightmare for those who cannot choose to ignore the germs which are exchanged in such a feast. I choose to live in blissful, willful ignorance.
I love that you can continue adding to it, so that it is never empty, and we never reach that point in the night when we wonder if it’s time to leave, to move on, to go our separate ways, because dinner is finished. Dinner is never really finished— it can go on and on, until we’re bleary eyed and our jokes no longer make sense, and the night melts into memory. It’s beautiful, communal, chaotic. Like people, I guess.
