Hello hello,
The sun is out, the days are longer, and the air is full of allergens. I hope you’re getting plenty of fresh air and witnessing the bloom of magnificent flowers in other people’s front gardens.
Last week I wrote about what I’ve learned about making love last and the effort it requires, and this week’s newsletter is a variation on the theme.
I saw my cousin in her drama school show a month ago. Based on an epic medieval tale from Cornwall, Tristan & Yseult was all about love, heartbreak and grand passions, with a peppering of fake sword-fighting in between. The play itself was an excellent two-hour modern adaptation, but I want to reflect on the exercise the audience had to partake in before the performance began. As you walked into the auditorium, you were handed a sticky note with a pen and asked to describe what you thought love was. It was then collected by a cast member and read out on stage. I wrote: “Love is like a risotto — you have to stir it continuously to create something truly delicious”.
It was heartwarming to start the evening this way, especially when you got to hear what everyone else wrote down. Others described love as a pizza or cheesy chips at the end of a night out, singing the entirety of Bohemian Rhapsody (harmonies included) with your friends, or dancing like no one is watching. What struck me was how many people, including myself, compared love to food. Every other answer claimed love to be the most important ingredient in their mother’s cooking, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream or a 2AM takeaway order. So this week, I want to reflect on the almost inseparable connection between these two things and why it might occur.
Five years ago, I picked up Nora Ephron’s Heartburn in the numb aftermath of a breakup. The pain was so intolerable at the time, I basically stopped eating. It was only when I started reading about Ephron’s marriage breakdown that I regained my appetite. The way she wrote about love and food made me want to eat again, like this extract here:
In the end, I always want potatoes. Mashed potatoes. Nothing like mashed potatoes when you’re feeling blue. Nothing like getting into bed with a bowl of hot mashed potatoes already loaded with butter, and methodically adding a thin cold slice of butter to every forkful. The problem with mashed potatoes, though, is that they require almost as much hard work as crisp potatoes, and when you’re feeling blue the last thing you feel like is hard work. Of course, you can always get someone to make the mashed potatoes for you, but let’s face it: the reason you’re blue is that there isn’t anyone to make them for you.
Or this one here:
The next man I was involved with lived in Boston. He taught me to cook mushrooms. He taught me that if you heat the butter very hot and put just a very few mushrooms into the frying pan, they come out nice and brown and crispy, whereas if the butter is only moderately hot and you crowd the mushrooms, they get all mushy and wet. Every time I make mushrooms I think of him. There was another man in my life when I was younger who taught me to put sour cream into scrambled eggs, and since I never ever put sour cream into scrambled eggs I never really think of him at all.
Her recipes for key lime pie and peach pie are bursting with love; you can imagine her carefully testing them over the years, adjusting the quantities each time to achieve a better bake. She writes candidly about how cooking became a way of saying I love you in her marriage, and then how it became an easy way of saying I love you, but then she realises it became the only way and wonders if she neglected other ways of expressing her love.
There are countless other examples of how writers, often women, bring food and love together. Mona Hajjar Halaby travels to Palestine to find her mother’s orange tree, the type used to make marmalade, Mishti Ali writes about how the fruit bowl has always been a communal affair in a British Bangladeshi household and Ruby Tandoh reminds readers of Eat Up that “food shouldn’t be a bad boyfriend, dragging you down and holding you to ransom.” Instead, it should “nourish your body as much as it fuels your mind; it should pump life through your veins”.
What is the connection between food and love?
A scientist would tell you that it’s because both love and food cause the dopamine system to become active, so in our brains, at least, food is connected to love and a sense of well-being.
I don’t doubt the above, but I also believe that love and food closely mirror one another. Like food, everyone needs regular doses of love. Like food, love requires preparation, patience, innovation and an active presence — you can’t be passive when cooking; otherwise, you’ll burn your ingredients.
Recently, when I was in Tunisia, and the birds were singing in the garden, I cut up a blood orange, went outside with it and sat on a white plastic chair. I sucked on the sweet juices and bit the flesh off, ripping it from the peel. I ate slowly, soaking in the 4 o’clock sun. It was wonderful. I thought to myself: I should never be mean to myself again.
P.S. If you enjoy reading about food (and love), read and/or subscribe to Vittles, which gets to the heart of food.
What I’ve enjoyed this week:
I’m currently reading Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit for hothouse book club and learning a lot about the world, Orwell, coal mines and roses.
I watched Return to Seoul in the cinema last week, and it was terrific — really tugged on those first gen immigrant heartstrings.
I had a delicious toasted focaccia sandwich at Prezzemolo & Vitale in Borough.
EUROVISION. I won’t stop going on about Finland! Abolish the judges’ vote.
What I’ve written elsewhere:
My piece on Uzbekistan’s electronic music scene is finally out in Huck Magazine! I worked on it for a few months, so would appreciate people reading it (if you’re into that kinda thing!)