When I had no time or money, I ate nothing but pasta and pesto. But why would anyone choose to do that?
What did I eat when I had no kitchen of my own, and very little money? The answer is: the same thing every day. At the time, I was living in one room in a house in Glasgow. Don’t misunderstand: it was a lovely room in a beautiful house overlooking the Botanic Gardens. I liked it. But the kitchen was shared between five tenants, whose names I did not know and whose faces I rarely saw (I was working long hours). Each night, bone tired, I would dash to this kitchen, cook some pasta, smother it in a spoonful of pesto from a jar (a delicacy that was then an exciting new import to our islands), dust it with a little dry supermarket parmesan and – presto! – supper was served.
At this point in my life, I’d never tasted fresh pesto, so I didn’t know what a poor substitute the long-lasting stuff was, though in any case, I liked this dish, which was filling and involved no mess or fuss. Its utter predictability – the end product never varied in the slightest degree – was soothing, and it was quite salty, and thus, to me, quite tasty (I love salt). But then again, I wouldn’t say that I wanted to eat it every night, let alone that I looked forward to it. It was only the result of my circumstances, a combination of limited resources and exhaustion. When the man with whom I was then having a thing took me out to dinner, I would eat like there was no tomorrow, roaming the menu like some crazed buffalo crisscrossing a prairie.
