There is a right and a wrong way to eat a bagel. Actually, there are several wrong ways to eat a bagel. You can’t be in a hurry. You can’t eat it quickly. And you can’t pick it up on the way to work at some half-ass coffee shop. Eating a bagel has an aristocratic flare to it. You need to be lighthearted, embracing, and indulgent. (There’s seriously no other justifiable reason to starting your day off with that many calories.) It’s a simple pleasure and it shows a sense of careful carelessness.
You can have a plain bagel with cream cheese. You can have a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese and jelly. You can have an sesame seed bagel with tofu vegetable cream cheese. Jewish delis have spent the past few centuries cultivating the bagel and its spreads. Wednesday was the only sunny day this week – every other day was ruined by thunderstorms – so I thought to take the day to relax and enjoy a bagel. I casually woke up around 11AM, toasted a bagel, smeared on chive and onion cream cheese, slapped on four ounces of nova (smoked salmon), and poured myself a big glass of Diet Coke. I spent the afternoon tanning, reading, and resting. It was a perfect day in the suburbs – couldn’t have asked for more.
Diet Coke Diaries 