Free Talking with My Mouth Full by Gail Simmons

little mustard, with a fried or hard-boiled egg.
    In the last weeks of our stay, I was transferred to the kitchen, where I worked as a dishwasher. The dining hall served several hundred people three times daily, which made for a lot of pots and pans to be scrubbed by hand. I did so for eight hours a day. After a while, it became a habit and I could completely tune out my brain, listen to music, or have time to just think.
    But my last job in the kibbutz kitchen was my very favorite of all, as the “egg girl,” on breakfast duty. I began at four in the morning to prep for breakfast at seven. I made giant batches of pancakes, just as I would make crêpes years later at Le Cirque, and giant batches of scrambled or fried eggs, moving them quickly, methodically over a vast flattop grill, fifty or more at a time. I was basically a short-order cook, invaluable training for what was to come. I could pour myself into it and get lost in the action, temporarily forgetting my teenage angst.
    It brought back the same feeling of magic that my childhood egg creations had so many years before. Now I worship eggs. My favorite way to eat them is with what we as children called soldiers: a soft-boiled egg in a little cup, with strips of buttered toast on the side.
    Both my time in Israel and in Spain taught me a vital truth about young love: immersing yourself in a totally different world than your own is the perfect way to gain perspective on the troubles that plague you. When you travel, you don’t have the option of closing the door and weeping in your bedroom. You’re forced to push through it, to be in the moment and appreciate where you are. You’re not surrounded by the things that give you comfort. You don’t have your friends, your tub of ice cream, your favorite sweatshirt. Instead, you have new experiences; sweet, sour, salty, and serendipitous moments that become new memories, fresher and more powerful than those that came before.
    Food is, naturally, an extension of this. Foreign flavors convey so many priceless lessons: discovery, elation, pleasure, nostalgia, comfort, and fear. The food of a new place teaches you so much about its culture. It offers a window into other people’s lives, history, and values. It allows you to see that the world is much bigger than you and your broken heart.

FIVE
    Finding My Footing — and the Best Back Bacon
    LUNCHTIME AT THE Saint Lawrence Market. Hundreds of cheeses are stacked on top of one another—from France, Quebec, Vermont, and Ontario. At my dad’s favorite stall, there’s elk jerky, with a sign that reads, IT’S NOT PRETTY . . . BUT IT’S GOOD. Maple syrup. Giant ham hocks, slabs of back bacon (known outside Canada as Canadian bacon), and handmade sausages. Russian cabbage rolls. Greek stewed eggplant. Loaves of Italian breads. Wheatgrass. Beeswax candles and local honey. Belgian crêpes deftly poured by young women speaking Japanese. Steaming coffee. Tangy Canadian “triple crunch” mustard. Pickles and olives. Live lobsters. I eat a spicy, saucy Portuguese pulled-chicken sandwich on a roll. Or a huge container of spaghetti with hot peppers and vegetables. I walk the floor of the market, tasting everything, gobbling the noodles. Then I go back to work. By 3 p.m., loaded down with food, I am fast asleep at my desk.

During my last year of college at McGill, I started to take a more serious interest in eating. I starting writing restaurant reviews for the school paper and reading a lot of food magazines, for the first time feeling like they weren’t just for my mother.
    Most of all I pored over the U.S.-published magazine Food & Wine , scouring the masthead to figure out who was who, trying to guess what each editor’s title actually meant, and dreaming about attending the annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen: How awesome does that sound? My mother had offered to take me on a trip after graduation and it actually came down to Napa or the Food & Wine Classic. For whatever