#5: Food (ie)

What's on your plate?

I love my instant pot. More than my husband (that is what he thinks anyway!). I only bought it recently and it has revolutionised the way I have been eating this year.

I have always had a strange relationship with food. I mean I have always loved food, I dream about food, I read about food, I watch food programmes, I just love reading cookery books and looking up recipes, and cooking makes me happy. And I often remember places by the food I’d eaten there, the cafes and restaurants. And ‘places to eat’ is often the first thing I research whenever I am travelling to a new place. For a long time, I have dreamt about owning a bookshop-cafe, one of those really cool and cosy places that has loads of comfy chairs and sofas and where people would hang out for ages, reading, eating, chatting.

But also, forever, I have been very conscious of how food affects me and my body. I also have a number of chronic illnesses so increasingly I have to be careful of what I am eating and when, but it isn’t easy to have a regular healthy routine when you have two small children. All the resolutions go out of the window when I am tired, stressed, have not slept well, and especially when I am in the middle of writing a book. This year, I have become more intentional about food and my relationship with it. No fancy diets (I hate that term), no watching the clock or rewarding myself with treats once I have achieved something difficult. But just a consistent healthy relationship with food. And there is where the instant pot comes in. I haven’t been paid for promoting it. This is just an honest reflection on how it has made it so easy for me cook healthy food with fresh ingredients everyday and how it lets me just experiment with flavours.

I have, for a long time, reflected on how our relationship to food is so crucial in our sense of home and belonging. Or maybe it is more so for people who have moved countries. I wrote an essay last year about how food shaped my immigrant experience, and how it defines the thin line between assimilating and fitting in. It was published last year in the Hinterland Magazine and here is the first page just for you as a sneak peek, but you can find the whole essay in the print copy:

What else have I been reading?

1. Food is of course a huge source of inequalities in our society. Jack Monroe writes so much about this and in a very eloquent and accessible manner. If you don’t follow her on twitter, you should! In a series of tweets recently she highlighted how there had been a 344% price increase for basic items such as rice in supermarkets. Baked beans were 22p, and now are 32p, canned spaghetti was 13p, now 35p and bread was 45p, now 58p. She said:

   “Now benefits haven’t doubled in that time, wages haven’t doubled in that time so people are being forced to buy less, and eat less and consume less. It’s the people who aren’t represented in the media, and who don’t have a voice, who are just having to make these absolutely terrible decisions, missing meals in order to feed their children or because they simply can’t afford to eat anymore.”

   This is a great piece to read about this.

2. I have been reading and writing about emotional and mental labour for a long time now. I have done numerous talks on this too, especially recently as the mental labour and load has become more visible during the pandemic and lockdown.

   

   (comic by the french artist, Emma)

   Cooking- preparing and serving of food- is of course a very gendered role in most homes, and in most cultures. But, on the other hand, women are severely under-represented in professional kitchens. The chef Marco Pierre White, you might remember, said that women are ‘too emotional’ to work in the kitchen, and that men ‘handle the pressure better’. This idea that women are too emotional has always counted against them and such statements reinforce the view that certain domains, especially one where rationality and ability to withstand pressure might be needed, are not a fit for women. It is interesting since women have for centuries cooked food and handled large kitchens in the domestic domain. Ultimately what this does is keep women out of the professional domain and reinforce the archaic view that their place is in the kitchen but only inside their homes. It also keeps us trapped in the binary notion of masculine/feminine and that there are certain ‘masculine’ roles and certain ‘feminine’ attributes.

   I am currently writing a book about this. If you’re following me on social media (Twitter and Instagram) keep your eyes peeled as some exciting news coming next week.

3. Food and climate change intersect of course. A huge deal. It is changing food traditions as in this article about the Cajun coast where environmental damage is affecting the region’s rich culture of food and fishing.

   I will keep talking about this and sharing links in the coming weeks. But for now, it is worth reminding ourselves that about a third of all the world’s food goes to waste, and producing, transporting and letting that food rot releases 8-10% of global greenhouse gases. If food waste were a country, it would have the third-biggest carbon footprint after the US and China, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.

   How Food waste is a huge contributor to climate change

   And, finally as Virginia Woolf said ‘“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” But I am thinking a lot about those who have to go to bed hungry, how many children do not get one proper meal everyday (and we are one of the richest economies), and how much food we waste in our homes.

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So, what’s for lunch?

Why not share your favourite food and recipes here? I would love to try them.

Pragya