Holy Stove, Holy Cooking Pot, Holy Ramen!

It's a signal moment.  I have cooked in the trailer.  Celebrate this moment with me.

 

 

Some meals are so pure and so perfect that they become holy in our memory, crystalline moments of transcendence that will never be forgotten.  The Last Supper seems to have been one, and perhaps the first taste of manna the Israelites had in the desert.  I had such a meal the first time I went to Burning Man. After days of frantic preparations and an epic journey to reach Black Rock City that seemed like it would never end, an exhausted last push to make camp and then a collapse into the oblivion of sleep, my brother made a batch of Mussels Provencal.   We'd been eating bad fast food and junk food snacks or not eating at all for long stretches in the push to get ready and the long drive to get there.  And then, that first meal, simple and pure, broth with butter and wine and the humble mussel still in its shell, it was like nothing I'd ever tasted.  To have real food, made by hand and served hot, eaten in a kind of dazed silence. It was so wonderful that I tried to recreate it the following year, but while I got the recipe right and it tasted good, I couldn't recapture that sublime purity, the holiness of my first meal in Black Rock.

 

But just now, I came close.  I pulled in to Brawley about 9:20, and messed around deciding what to do next.  It didn't make sense to run out to the Slabs and try to find my peeps and set up camp in the dark, so I prepared to spend the night at, you guessed it, the Walmart.  I needed some supplies so I went in to do the traditional pre-Slab Walmart shopping run.  I was hungry, and with the trailer it just isn't practical to go hunting for more fast food, and I'm sick of it anyway.  I happened to see a bunch of ramen noodles, and I decided I would get a package and light the stove and make a meal.

 

The crew at Dr. George's got the honor (and risk) of lighting the stove for the first time in god knows how long to make sure it worked.   Then I lit it for the first time before leaving home, to test it and make sure I could do it.  But nothing had been cooked yet.

 

I rooted around and found a pot and some water and a measuring cup and I turned on the gas at the tank and lit the stove and put on water to boil.  Such a simple, basic, domestic act, but what a triumph after this long, long journey with KD.  Cheap ramen, staple of bachelors and broke college students, costing only twenty eight cents, but so perfect for this inaugural meal.  It was hot and good, and the steam beat up into my cold face, and I could not have asked for anything better.  Holy holy holy!  Holy ramen that feeds us in the desert!

 

I haven't busted through the wall yet, but I'm getting close.