Couscous, or Why I Miss Ken

I should have seen it coming--all the signs of the food obsession that has recently become all I can think, talk, or eat about. The name stuck at the bottom of my posts, Couscous, is my childhood nickname. Other kids get 'pookie', 'sweetheart', 'honey'; not me, I get a nickname derived from the pasta of Berber origin. Granted, it was all I ate for a portion of my life larger than I would like to admit. In high school, my most devasting breakup was not with a boyfriend, but with Senju, my sushi place. Ken, the chef, called me (yes, he had my cell phone number) to tell me that he was up and moving back to Japan. No warning at all. I just didn't see it coming. I huddled under my covers, crying, while friends coming to console me flowed in and out. The rainbow box was my daily lunch for years--layers of luscious tuna, rice, crab, rice, salmon, rice, roe. In addition to providing sustinance, it was the place of my first date, lunches with best friends, sunday night family dinners. I eventually recovered, though my friends and I did recently consider tattoo-ing "Senju" in Japanese on our feet.

Wait, there's more. My college essay, which asked for the biggest risk I had ever taken, was about trying zucchini after violently hating it for most of my life (for the record, I still don't like it). Traveling has always been a huge part of my life, yet my memories are all centered around the food: tashines in Morroco, pho in Vietnam, the time we shipped a turkey to the Domenican Repblic for Thanksgiving...

So, as you can see, it was all a matter of time. Now, embracing my obsession, I find myself surrounded with Institute of Culinary Education catalogs, every food memoir or essay ever written, menupages.com consistantly open on my computer desktop, reservations at restaurants months in advance in anticipation of family coming in to town, recipes strewn about....but I guess that's a whole 'nother post.