Secretly, I am ashamed. I watch others eat their meals with knives and forks and feel something of a pang; wishing that I, too, could accept the conventional approach to eating a meal. But it’s too late for me. Years of training mean that I must take the road less travelled and consume my meals, not at the table with a fistful of cutlery, but in the pantry and directly from the jar. For I choose to consume my ingredients not in combination but one at a time. For I am a tin eater, plain and simple.
Secretly, I am ashamed. I watch others eat their meals with knives and forks and feel something of a pang; wishing that I, too, could accept the conventional approach to eating a meal. But it’s too late for me. Years of training mean that I must take the road less travelled and consume my meals, not at the table with a fistful of cutlery, but in the pantry and directly from the jar. For I choose to consume my ingredients not in combination but one at a time. For I am a tin eater, plain and simple.
The life of a tin eater is one filled with subterfuge and stealth. Having two brothers and two sisters meant there was very little I could do that escaped detection. For some reason, siblings feel oddly compelled to announce everything you do at a volume somewhere just below ‘air raid siren’ and a pitch slightly beneath dog whistle. You could be forgiven for thinking in such a harsh environment that I’d be unable to get away with anything, but that would be to underestimate the inexhaustible nature of human ingenuity.
We’d be sitting together in the lounge room, all five us, watching a movie. Without so much as a word, I’d attempt to slip out of my chair. I say ‘attempt’ as the seat in question was not the conventional four-legged variety but a beanbag. It’s a scientific fact that getting out of a beanbag is akin to attempting to break a bear hug executed by an actual bear. You can no more ‘slip’ out of a beanbag than you can throw a tennis ball and land it on the moon. Getting out of the upholstered, velour quicksand required you to roll over several times to the floor before pushing yourself to your feet.
At first, my brothers and sisters would say nothing. I would then make my way to the kitchen and begin a process I like to think of as ‘visual grazing’. This involved a full reconnaissance of the pantry. For many families, the pantry is an expansive area that permits you to observe all the food your family has to offer. Ours, however, was something of an afterthought, squeezed into a space that was originally intended for a broom cupboard. The first challenge, however, was to open the door without setting off my siblings.
I am sure that we possessed oil. Given that we had a shed that preserved everything including a used plaster cast from when I broke my leg, there was bound to be a can of WD 40 somewhere. And yet, for some reason the hinges of our pantry were forever squeaky. To open it was to unleash a sound that resembled a choir of mice after someone had poured a bucket of cold water on them. Perhaps that was exactly the point. No matter where our parents were, they could instantly tell when the pantry was being violated. My father could be off in the back paddock and using a chainsaw, but would cease as the sound of a mouse-like chorale drifted across the valley. If it was impossible to put anything past someone in the back paddock, there was no hope of eluding those in the living room.
Using the kind of care normally associated with detonating an explosive, I would begin to prise open the pantry. No matter how careful I was, it would never fail to emit a tortured squeal. At the very first note, there would be a challenge from my brothers and sisters. The words, ‘what are you doing?’ rang out like a demand to stand and deliver. In truth, they knew full well what I was up to. The only thing more ridiculous than the question was my standard response of ‘nothing’ when, in fact, ‘nothing’ could be further from the truth.
When faced with all manner of foodstuffs, most people would be tempted to create some kind of snack or meal. I, on the other hand, thought this would simply delay the inevitable. Rather than mess around with the black magic that is actual cooking, I preferred to jimmy the lid off various containers and eat directly from the tin. The trick was to complete stuffing my mouth before curiousity got the better of one of my brothers and sisters who, having failed to be satisfied by my earlier response of ‘nothing’, had decided to come to the kitchen to personally investigate.
Milo was a particular favourite. Truth be told, I ate more of it from the tin than I ever did as a drink. Sometimes, our parents would mess with the formula and purchased drinking chocolate instead. Although the drinking chocolate was exquisitely tasty, the power was much finer and meant that if you were to breathe in at the wrong time, your throat would convulse, causing you to choke and a small cloud of chocolate drinking powder to burst over your lips like an eruption from a long-dormant volcano.
Truth be told, some of the finest meals I ever ate were consumed behind the pantry door. It’s something I’ve since given up. Whether that’s because I grew out of it or because our current pantry doesn’t have a door and is all the less thrilling as a result, I truly couldn’t say. Whenever I go to a restaurant, I am often left to lament that the meals arrive fully prepared and that guests are denied the elicit joy that comes from sampling the ingredients individually whilst the chef is in the back paddock.