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Food for the Heart

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Author Laura Fraser shares her essay on heartbreak and recovery and the meal that helped.

—Winner of the International Association of Culinary Professionals' Bert Greene Award in the Essay division.

By Laura Fraser EatingWell January/February 2007

At home, I keep a framed photo of myself clinking wineglasses with a friend at dinner. It’s not flattering: I look wan and worn out, with red-rimmed eyes, cheeks flushed. But the expression the camera caught is one of pure contentment.

The photo was taken at Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, on May 8, 1997. I remember the date because on May 7, my husband left me. Up until dinner, May 8 was perhaps the worst day of my life. I spent most of it in bed, trying to grasp my new reality, that the man I loved and married and planned to have children with had left me, abruptly, for someone else. I’d been lied to, cheated on, abandoned—and I had a dinner reservation that evening at the restaurant that made Alice Waters famous for her fresh-from-the-farm approach to cooking.

Ironically, the dinner with my longtime friend Larry was payment for a bet I lost about which of us would get married first. We’d made the wager years before, when I thought I was too free-spirited to settle down, before I met the man who changed my mind. After I wed, Larry got married, too, and each of our lives got busier. Finally, our schedules coincided with a day we could get a reservation. That it turned out to be the day after my husband left me made me laugh at the universe in spite of my sadness.

When I told Larry the news, he asked if I wanted to cancel dinner. But I needed a reason to get out of bed, and that day, dinner at my favorite restaurant was the only one that would work. I might cry through every course, but I was going.

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