Solitary romance

I dine by candlelight thrice daily.

“Why waste romance on one meal alone?” I once asked myself. There seemed no justifiable reason to do so, so I’ve romanced myself at breakfast, lunch and dinner ever since.

The candles that cast the light by which I eat stand in various and sundry mismatched holders: a tall, white, ceramic and daintily painted one is paired Abbot-and-Costello-like with a short golden-clear bulbous one I found at The Pomegranate, my favourite antique store in North Hatley, Quebec, Canada.

The Pomegranate is stuffed with thousands upon thousands of treasures – so many that it can be tough to find exactly what you want when you want it, just as it can be tough to get the seeds out of the fruit after which the shop is named. Here’s a useful video showing a systematic technique for getting the hard-to-get-at-seeds out of a pomegranate.

The tall white and golden bulbous candleholders sit on the small round dining table I brought from Dubai. It replaced the big round dining table, which sat eight, which I adored and which was mine really, but which my ex-husband got when we split up because I couldn’t fit it in my new, vastly diminished digs.

The big table wouldn’t have fit here either, but its little sister nestles between the red sofa and the pass-through to the kitchen like it was built to be be there – what a stroke of decorating good luck!

My kitchen table is round too, it’s pine and has two “wings” that fold up or down. One is folded down now, so the table can snuggle up to the wall, which is important when your kitchen is just the right size for one person and no more. The little pine table is home to a trio of candles and their holders instead of a pair like the two the perched on the diningspace table.

I eat breakfast and lunch at the pine table in the kitchen, dinner at the other one next to the sofa. Here or there, no matter. Every meal at my place basks in candlelit glory: a tribute to solitary romance and the joys of healthy food lovingly prepared.