The Menu of Life / 'The Condimentary', a column by Margarita Bernal

Borges said: “I’m not sure that I exist, in reality. I am all the authors I’ve read, all the people I’ve known, all the women I’ve loved. All the cities I’ve visited, all my ancestors.”

These words, which remind us that we are what we live, invite me to think that we are also what we eat and everything that nourishes us.

For example, I crave curuba with cream when my mom was expecting me, a flavor that still accompanies me and is one of my favorite desserts.

I am the ugly, obligatory food from the school cafeteria, which I hid in napkins and stuffed in my pockets so I wouldn't get scolded when they checked my tray. I am the flavors and smells of my kitchen and my neighbor's. The microwaved food on airplanes. The dishes and laughter shared with friends. The table for two when I've had lovers and the table for one when I am my own love. The road trips stopping between stores and towns.

I am all the food photos I have on my phone, which I no longer remember from which restaurant or what they tasted like. The rice I smoked because I was distracted, the recipes that went wrong, the ones I never repeated, and the ones that remain in my memory. The toasts with eye contact.

I am the journeys I've taken in search of new flavors, surprising ingredients, different languages. Those that led me to discover other cuisines, other hands, other ways of sitting at the table. And yes, I am all the Negronis I've had—which, by the book, must number around five hundred—each with its own story, its own bar, its own company, its own night.

I am the good coffee and bread that reconciles me every morning and the bad one that embitters my body and soul. I am what I have eaten with joy, with anger, with shame, with passion, with love, with gluttony, with abandon, with fear. What has made me feel good and what has made me sick.

I am what I was never allowed to eat. What I dreamed of tasting and what wasn't on the table. I am also what I've cooked for others. The dishes I repeated, the ones I learned to please, the ones I invented to keep from crying.

And I am also what I've stopped cooking. The ingredients I no longer seek, the recipes I abandoned because they hurt. The meals that lost their meaning when someone left.

And I am a hunger that cannot be quenched by eating: a hunger to learn, to know, to read, to dream. I am powerlessness in the face of humanity's real hunger and what feeds me in other ways: words, music, glances, love, desire.

What we are doesn't fit into a list or a poem. A constantly changing recipe, written with ingredients that sometimes go well together and sometimes don't. What we lack gives us pleasure and what we avoid. We are every bite, every sip, every conversation at the table, every silence that accompanies a dish. And as long as we're alive, we'll keep adding flavors, adjusting the seasoning, trying again. Because life, like cooking, is never finished serving or seasoning, and that's the whole point of existing. Enjoy your meal.