Cutlets and Pasta

Childhood can tell a lot if you only listen.

I remember: in summer I usually spent time at the dacha. There, instead of the usual home food from Mom, Grandma cooked for us. She liked to fry, and fry hard. She made very juicy cutlets with a dark-brown crust, salty and unbelievably delicious, especially to us kids back then.

I loved those cutlets. I remember it like now: I would spear one with a fork, piercing the crispy crust, and slowly put it in my mouth. I bite off a piece, salty and juicy, and hold it there, savoring it. Then I chew slowly, swallow, and feel my stomach fill with a pleasant, satisfied heaviness. Mmm…

But that was later. First — the cutlet always came with a side dish. Most often it was pasta — simple horns, boiled in salted water and dressed with a piece of butter.

There they lie on the plate, surrounding the cutlet, and there’s so much of them, whew… The taste of that pasta is not so great compared to the excellent cutlets. In places it’s under-salted, in places a bit dry. In short, just the cutlets would have been enough for me!

But no, there aren’t many cutlets, they’re small, and you won’t be full on them, they say. You also need the pasta “so that lunch comes out complete.”

And I sit, look: in the blue corner of the ring — the pasta I have to eat; in the red corner — the cutlets I want so much.

I’ll start with the cutlets, perhaps!.. No, how will I eat that pasta after them — and they’ll cool down and become completely bland and tasteless? Better start with the pasta, and after them nothing will stop me from enjoying the cutlets!

And so I begin. Without taking my eyes off the cutlet, I steadily spear the pasta on my fork, put it in my mouth, chew, swallow. Another forkful, then another, and another. All the way to the end. I don’t let a single piece of cutlet accidentally stick to the pasta — no, I will still savor you!

A few minutes pass, the pasta piles up in my stomach and satiety is born. Finally, they are defeated, the army is routed!

I take on the cutlets. I almost don’t want to eat anymore, but the dreams of taste and juiciness are still fresh in my head. Because of them I can still push down the tasty pieces and get glimmers of the pleasure I had imagined so vividly…

First pasta, then cutlets.

First “have to,” then “want to.”

In food, in work, in relationships, in life.

And how else?..