The Delicious Bagel of Life

                I just ate a delicious bagel without going to a cafe. It was an everything-bagel with slices of tomato, garlic and Swiss cheese toasted together in the oven so the cheese melted through the tomato slices. Oh my word! So good!

I grew up thinking nice things were expensive, and that is true. Nice things cost. Where I was wrong is in thinking the cost was always monetary. I thought that rich people had nice things, and poor people had crappy things. Rich people had good tasting food, and poor people ate frozen food. That was the way of it, and there was no use complaining. I was wrong. The bagel proved me wrong. The bagel, tomato, garlic, and cheese all had a cost. Sure, but the work it took to combine those things and the patience to wait for them to cook transformed the experience.

That bagel changed my life and made my day, as the Swiss cheese and the garlic mixed with the tomato juice, and the texture of the tomato made a place for the sweetness of the cheese to mix with the sweetness of the tomato while the sour tartness of the cheese also mixed with the garlic and butter on a soft warm bagel with a salty, pleasantly burnt savory aftertaste of the poppy, sesame and onion. The combination was simple, and complex.

I am also learning to make tasty meals that are enough to serve 4 people, for only $7. Maybe in a later post I will talk about the new creations I’m inventing in the kitchen with more detail.

Right now, I just want to say that the really nice things in life come from spending a little more time to do a simple thing well, rather than just getting it done. Take time to be inefficient. Occasionally, coffee can be an event. A walk can be unrushed. Dinner can last long after all the food is eaten, or it can be an all night event of buying food, then cooking, then eating, and talking and talking, then coffee, and a night cap, and a sit on the porch.

That extra 15 mins is not available all the time, but when it is…it is just really nice. So it doesn’t take that much money to have nice things. It costs the same as it costs to have the bare essentials and a little extra effort. I really liked that bagel.