Love Among the (Modern) Cavemen

My birthday falls on Valentine’s Day, and instead of going to a restaurant and enduring an awkwardly romantic dinner with friends and family — yes, I once shared a meant-for-two dessert with my Dad by candlelight — I prefer to eat in. Last year while living in San Francisco, my boyfriend Dave picked up a couple pies from our favorite pizza place and we celebrated at home, along with a nice bottle of wine. We vowed to make it a new tradition.

Almost a year later, with our move back to New York just two weeks away, Dave told me that, for his health, he wanted to start eating like a caveman. I imagined him killing his own food and wearing a loin cloth. It sounded kind of sexy.

But when I learned specifics, I balked. The “paleo diet” is based on the premise that humans are evolutionary designed to consume certain foods and not others – that we should avoid processed foods, sure, but also such death-dealers as… dairy,  legumes, and grains. To mimic gorging after long hunts, the modern über-caveman runs barefoot and fasts for days before eating loads of raw meat.

Dave promised that, realistically, he was only planning to limit carbs and refined sugar, but even this irked me. I’m a lover of post-Stone Age inventions like spaghetti carbonara, soup dumplings and Russian dressing. Dave and I plan weekends around what new restaurants we’ll visit or what recipe we’ll tackle at home with friends, and I couldn’t very well tell the waiter at the hot new pasta joint that no, we’d really rather order two sides of spinach.

Food isn’t just about diet, after all. When we were first getting to know each other, he requested extra spicy sauce on his sandwich and then layered a few potato chips in between the bread, “for added crunch.” In a stroke of genius or idiocy, I took that as a sign that we may very well be meant for each other. Five years later, so far, so good.

So when he expressed a desire to restrict what we ate together… well, as far as I was concerned, we might as well go all the way back to the Ectasian period and live solely off of algae.

I imagined him killing his own food and wearing a loin cloth. It sounded kind of sexy.

And what about the romance? Lady and the Tramp couldn’t have had their adorable noodle moment, snouts touching, with a raw pork chop.

I chalked his decision up to the surroundings. After our two years in San Francisco, Dave had procured a yoga mat, and I sported a new, angry burn from when I’d snatched a piece of kale too quickly off a still-hot pan— I just couldn’t restrain myself. That city does weird things to you.

Once we hit New York, I figured the Dave I knew and loved would return – the one who scoured the city with me for the best shrimp dumplings or rainbow cookie, who welcomed spaghetti and meatball competitions, whose favorite food group was “sandwich.”

Yet I was wrong. New city, new job, new diet — and I watched in disbelief during our first few days back when he ignored the bread tray at restaurants, roasted Brussels sprouts instead of potatoes, went for wine instead of beer. My mature, supportive reaction was to groan, make some comment about mastodon meat, and eat whatever carb was in reaching distance. We sparred with competing articles proving our respective points. When I type in “pa” now, the Google search box automatically fills in “paleo diet death bad.”

Did it matter that many of our dinners, the only meal we reliably ate together, were mostly paleo-friendly to begin with? That our go-to meals — roast chicken or fish with vegetables — needed little tweaking? That Dave was more active in the kitchen, that he looked more svelte?

No. I was convinced that his carb-less decision was an affront to everything that bonded us as a couple.

Before watching the State of the Union with friends, we went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Our socks were somewhere in Kansas and we were living out of suitcases at my parents’ house while we hunted for an apartment. Stress was high.

The waiter plopped down a bowl of thin salsa and some chips and as Dave perused the menu, he attempted to eat the salsa with his fork. This is about as effective as replacing your soda straw with a knife. I scooped up

When I type in “pa” now, the Google search box automatically fills in “paleo diet death bad.”

big chipfuls of salsa, my irritation mounting, until I finally yelped, “JUST TAKE A CHIP! ONE CHIP!” He didn’t.

Later, as I watched the President’s remarks, which closed with a plea for cooperation, I thought less of how they related to America, to the mission to kill Bin Laden, and more about how they related to bagels.

On our way home, after a few reflective blocks in silence, I cleared my throat.

“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry about the chip thing. It’s just…”

“You’re scared I’ll never eat a bowl of pasta again?”

“YES!”

“Look, I still love food. If we go to a pizza place, I’m not ordering a salad. I’m not a lunatic. I’m not going to sacrifice deliciousness.”

My heart fluttered. How lucky, to have found a man who equated lunacy with opting to eat bland food.

“I’m just going to stick with it for a bit, see what happens. Plus,” he added, “it’s fine to take cheat days along the way, if necessary.”

And with those words echoing in my head, we took the ultimate test: The following Sunday morning we met friends at Barney Greengrass. I’d spent months enduring the Bay Area’s version of a bagel, nearly plotzing one day when I came across a pumpkin-spelt version at my local store, and I salivated at the sight of the true New York bagels, piled high in the case next to gleaming rows of cured fish. 

When Dave ordered a bagel platter with white fish and nova, I exhaled audibly, and moments later, when he was halfway through, I nudged him.

“Fish and vegetables for dinner tonight?”

He nodded.

“And pizza for my birthday?”

He wiped a crumb off his face and grunted in affirmation, like a true caveman.

More by Sophie Brickman:

When Michelle Obama came to lunch

What Michelle Obama had for lunch: Spinach pasta with mushrooms recipe