Hello friends!
I had planned to write something about Samhain/Halloween this week in a bid to be all thematic. But then I thought, fuck it, I want to write about food.
It started when I listened to last weeks’ Blindboy podcast…
… which is 55 minutes of pure cooking chat joy. In the episode, he talks about having a huge anxiety attack seeing his friend make a stew after having just left home, which after unpicking with a therapist, was all all about feeling unable to comprehend how he could possibly be enough of an adult to make A Stew.
I remember being and feeling similarly shit at university age. I survived for 2.5 years of uni on buttered warbi’s bread and lidl 19p noodles. Not a vegetable in sight. I was a horror when it came to housework or tidying up after myself, and generally fairly unpleasant to live with I imagine. I did not understand how to adult at all. I genuinely couldn’t understand how people knew what ingredients to buy and then what to do with them. In my head, the other students on my degree course were cycling home from farmers markets with baskets of fresh vegetables and having other students round for tea. Which to be fair, part of my degree being an art history course, was not completely inaccurate.
Then, in my third year, I met my (now) husband and (now) best mate in a pub in Bolton. I started coming back most weekends and kipping at one of their houses. They seemed to understand how to do things like Boil Pasta and Make A BLT. Things made with kitchen items other than kettles and toasters. Fascinating stuff.
That period felt so formative, that the simple meals made for me then have really stuck; Quorn pasta, BLT, bacon and pepperoni pasta, curries; hardly culinary delights but opened my eyes a little to the pleasures of cooking food. So I did. Not consistently and nothing amazing, but it felt a little bit like self-care, in a very non-wellness industry and more in a basic you-are-worthy-of-care sense.
Somehow, a few years down the line, I ended up with my very own food shop, where not only did I sell food, but I cooked it for workshop guests and customers. Now I’m the weirdo who always asks for a cook book every Christmas simply so I can sit and read it.
Continuing with the food theme, earlier this week I performed at my friend Romina’s virtual book launch. (Her book is called “Sardines” and is available to buy here.)
I’ve always loved listening to Romina’s poems; food is something that is present in so much of their work, and is often used as the connective tissue between their two home countries- Portugal and England. Romina moved from Portugal to Bolton when they were 11 and for me, this poem in Sardines perfectly sums up how that must have felt!
So for this week, I thought we could have a go at writing about food.
Invitation to write/play…
As ever, take this however you like. Write about food as memory; think of your favourite meal and describe it. If you have a memory attached with food, start with the food and expand out; what else was happening?
What food do you eat when you feel like shit? Do you have a particular meal associated with a formative time in your life? Here’s one I wrote about my first day home after giving birth to my eldest daughter:
As with most things, things that start out as writing about food often become about something else entirely. Take Cutting Greens by Lucille Clifton, for example. It’s not about the “collards and kale”, it’s about how the “kitchen twists dark on its spine”.
Food is a great prompt for writing because it uses so many of our senses when recalling it. How does what you are describing smell/taste like/feel like/look like? How does thinking about it make you feel?
Let me know how you get on. I suspect there will be other prompts I send related to food because I could chat about it for ages!
Much love
Em x
Be Lucky
Alright my little avocado, you’re up!
An adventure that started ten years ago.
Fondled, prodded and poked you are the chosen one
and for my part the timing has to be just right.
Hey! You’re in quantum superposition - did you know that?
The outcome shouldn’t be binary but somehow it is.
Nature seems to like a big reveal with its myriad hopes,
fears and literally everything tangled up in the riddle.
So let’s find out which universe we are in.
Hot chocolate
The glass wobbles on the saucer
Stark lighting
Seeking warmth
Chatting, so much chatting
Hashtag chairs and factory lines
Picking through pastries