This is all I wanted for now and Boy does it ever hit the spot.
One time long ago I was home by myself so ill that I thought I would die. And so did everyone else, and this night my younger brother called and said he was coming over and asked what could he bring and I told him a container of mashed potatoes with chicken gravy from Kentucky Fried Chicken. I pictured the small size.
So he did. I believe they are the potato flakes type of potatoes, I'm not sure about that, and the gravy most likely comes out of a #10 size restaurant tin, I'm imagining this part, it is bland all the way through like hospital food except saltier than that and made to appeal to everybody on Earth and offend nobody at all and it was perfect for me at that moment. Both brothers showed up along with my father distraught together the three presented the largest size container that KFC sells but I could eat only a few tablespoons. And by that I honestly do believe that container of bland KFC mashed potatoes and chicken gravy that I went back to a few more times saved my life. It felt like it did.
That is why it is no depravation at all for me to have this alone for dinner and be more than plainly satisfied with just this.
No compaña.
ReplyDeletethat's Dominican for a meal's main ingredient. usually the expensive part of the meal. the part that demands most attention, effort.
That part of the meal is so important a meal w/o it is not considered a meal. it's that serious.
On the other hand...
ReplyDeleteShould, for example, I'm not saying this meal in particular, in an extreme case of meager availability of recourse, to meet the compaña strict standard, a Dominican food critic, which encompasses every Dominican alive, could be compelled to say, if not murmur under his breath, that the gravy could be, again isolated case by case, a compaña.
But that would be a long stretch.
I heard a country guy, it might have been an Alaskan trucker on t.v., something like that, say, "Well, that just put the gravy on my mashed potatoes." Suggesting complete satisfaction about something good that happened. But hardly a complete meal for a big guy like that.
ReplyDeleteThat's the cherry on my Sundae.
Same idea. I didn't realize how deeply engrained the whole full panoply meal was and then I visited my sister one Sunday and she did the full on Sunday thing. I told her I was amazed. Had I known I would have planned on being more starving, and she said, "Oh, we do this every day."
Oh.
Come to think of it, that is how it was growing up so perfectly natural to extend that to her family. But I didn't .
My nephews cannot imagine having leftovers. Not ever. Never. It is a disgusting impossibility in their way of doing things.
And that is why everybody in my family started out skinny and ended up fat and I started out skinny and stayed that way. I'm thinking. I don't know. I had two light meals after this that I'm not showing. The equivalent of a regular meal stretched out over several hours and separated into individual parts.