Alexandra Antonioni - Eat Me - Love, Sex and the Art of Eating

I left for Singapore in the late Nineties where I worked for a couple of years writing restaurant reviews for a local newspaper. After a while the gypsy in my soul needed a change of pace (can you see a pattern forming here?), so, in a bid to reflect on my life and ‘find myself’, I headed for Australia with no job and no idea of what I was going to do once I got there.

It was there, having been totally captivated by the inspirational Australian food culture, that I first had the idea to write a book incorporating the two things that were so pivotal in my life: Love and Food. I wanted to convey to women how easy it was to seduce a man with food in much the same way that a spider uses her web to entrap her prey.

I spent a year researching the shift in attitudes and other people’s perspectives of the sometimes cold, hard world of modern-day dating. It would seem that things have changed a lot and, armed with this information and drawing on my, it has to be said extensive, personal experience and a strong belief about the nurturing effect of food on romantic love, Eat Me was born.

This book is best described as a tongue-in-cheek, sometimes searingly honest and occasionally painful journey through the highs and lows of a modern-day relationship for serial romantics who adore food. But, if used correctly, Eat Me can also help transform even the most inexperienced and reluctant cook into a culinary siren; one who appreciates the importance of enhancing and nurturing relationships through food and the cooking of it.

I would love to hear about your romantic foodie moments and any ideas or suggestions you may have. Please contact me at eatmemail@yahoo.co.uk

( Manners of a Modern Romance )

I’m not shooting for a successful relationship.At this point I’m just looking for something that will prevent me from throwing myself in front of a bus.I’m keeping my expectations very, very low.I am just looking for a mammal. That’s my bottom line.And I’m really very flexible on that too .

LUCILLE BALL

So, my fellow modern-day romantic gourmand, if you have bought this book you are one of the many amongst us who appreciate the unbridled joy that is love combined with the pleasure of all things oral.

Love and Food – the ultimate pairing of the senses. What more could a mere mortal ask for … ok, maybe a pair of vintage Manolos, but, hey, can you eat them?

Welcome, then, to Eat Me , where culinary possibility flirts with romantic probability. Exciting, sensual and utterly blissful, a stimulating and deeply fulfilling manner in which to woo and be wooed, Eat Me is neither cookbook nor love story but a journey through modern romantic love (on a full stomach) from start to finish.

Yes, yes already, I know, I said finish.

Before we start on this journey, it is my duty to explain to you the three stages of Love in the game that is modern-day dating.

Think Bridget Jones, Sex and the City, 9½ Weeks (the fridge scene!).

Time to wake up and smell the testosterone. Baby, times they are a-changing. Our generation is dealing with a completely different set of rules, which we are playing by ear and making up as we go along. The days of ‘Forsaking All Others Forever and Ever, Amen’ are but a cloud of well-trodden, soggy confetti in the fairytale nuptials of our wildest imaginations. Divorce is on the up; true love is proving to be more elusive than ever. It is a bona fide serial-dating, bed-hopping jungle out there.

Deal with it.

We live in a world of serial, but temporary, monogamy; a smorgasbord of endless possibility, where a broken heart is no longer terminal but instead easily and endlessly restorable. It happens the moment yet another cutie with the right combination of looks, style and, if we are lucky, cash, appears. He/she will have that certain something, that je ne sais quoi that enables him/her to turn our heads and make our bruised and battered little hearts beat, to the sound of their drum, that little bit faster.

Hey presto! We are no longer heartbroken, actually we are the opposite: heartsick, horny and in lust. In fact, off, once again, with the fairies.

Today we seek not so much Mr Right as Mr Right Now, thus a staggering percentage of relationships exist in the sphere that is:

‘The Beginning’ ‘The Middle’ ‘The End’

Hey, back off! I didn’t write the rules, so don’t shoot the messenger.

Come on, don’t get too disheartened, of course True Love exists. Look around you, surely you know loads of people in successful relationships, happily married with a couple of kids, white picket fence, roses over the door, etc? Whaddaya mean they’re all divorced? There is no place in our world for such blatant (though, some would say, justified) cynicism. I as the author reserve the right to keep an open mind. One day my prince will come, as will yours.

Honest.

Meanwhile, in the parallel universe that is Serial Monogamy, I will embark on every new relationship with relish and have myself an absolute ball. Life is too short to mope around and beat one’s, hopefully ample, breast over yet another lost love. Not all men are bastards, just as all women are not gold-digging ball-breakers: this is but an urban myth. I hope.

So there you have it, in most cases life is not the fairytale we were told it was going to be but, hey, neither is it so bad. We may have to kiss a lot of toads before we find our prince but … kissing the right toads, in the right places, whilst feasting on the perfect morsel, can actually be a lot of fun.

Please enjoy your Serial Monogamy in the knowledge that one day, when you are old and grey, rocking in your chair surrounded by your gloriously doting grandchildren (or you’re the oldest swinger in town, suckin’ down a Margarita with your latest toy boy/girl), you won’t regret the things you did.

Only the things you didn’t.

Your words are my food, your breath my wine, you are everything to me .

SARAH BERNHARDT

Right, I’m glad that’s over with. Now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk food, my next favourite subject.

It is my belief that food plays a significant role in the seduction, the pleasuring and the binding together of two newly-dating individuals. This first became apparent when, at the tender age of 16 and a total innocent, I was taken out to dinner on a proper date for the first time ever. Mitch was 24 years old and a friend of a friend, he used to come over to my house and we’d spend hours listening to music and just hanging out. When he asked me to go to dinner I was over the moon, but my parents less so and only allowed me to go out with this ostensibly much older man on the condition that I was home by 11pm, sharp .

He picked me up at 7.30pm in his rather flash and very red sports car and took me, at somewhat high speed, to a very ‘in’ bistro in Mayfair. Walking into that jewelled, cavelike restaurant was the most amazing moment of my thus far rather sheltered 16-year-old life. Everywhere I looked there was glamour, I felt like I’d arrived. As a family we’d always gone to lovely restaurants but this was different, this was very grown up, utterly sophisticated and terribly sexy.

We were seated at a corner table with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, aka The Widow, which to this day remains my absolute favourite champagne. He ordered for both of us. (So manly.) We started with huge pink prawns dripping with butter and oozing garlic, which we ate with our fingers, catching the butter with our tongues as it dripped.