Home Cooked

- where we go when it gets heavy.

Sometimes all you need is a home cooked meal from your mum. Or your dad. Or anyone that isn’t yourself really. I find so much joy in cooking for the people I love but there is something so special about walking in through the porch door and smelling my mums cooking before I’ve even taken my shoes off.

Welcome back to the Food Series.

My mum and dad are big advocates for family meal times. Time together over a meal was encouraged and we were expected to eat everything on our plates without a fuss. And then my parents split up and 4 became 3 in both houses - which a few years later became 2 when my sister went off to uni. But meal times didn’t stop, there was just less places to set at the table.

Sometimes, through my later teenage years it was only 1 - just me - if my dad was working late or my mum had gone away again training for her new career. This was completely fair from them both and the would double, even triple check it was okay for them to miss dinner, or if I had someone to come over and eat with me. I think now it was less about sharing and more about me actually eating.

TW: mention of ED

When I was 12 I stopped eating lunch, I kept this up for about 3 years, skipping 1-2 meals a day and although i’ve blacked out a lot of that I will always remember meal times being particularly difficult, for all the parties involved. I feel insincere continuing this Food Series without recognising what I had to do to get here - and the work I continue to do everyday.

Don’t worry, me and my therapist have this under control and I am slowly unpacking how this still affects me, so details are not something we need to go into. It is just key to highlight that between the ages of 12-15 I hated meal time. And then - when it was safe to do so - I was left to figure it out at my own pace, in my own way. I was given autonomy over what I wanted to eat and learnt to encourage myself to do so without guilt.

I will say this: I have fears surrounding this Food Series.

I recognise that I can have, or have had, negative addictive tendencies and I live with a constant fear of over obsessing again. I think it might be a cycle of redefining my relationship to food, and that is okay with me. Trends change, the chemicals they spray all over our vegetables change and my body changes. As much as I try not to be influenced by the influencer I have my moments of weakness - but it doesn’t mean I’m weak. Just healing.

So when the days feel a bit heavy, or my brain is tired, and my heart feels like it’s up at the back of my throat. I am lucky enough to be able to call a parent and go home for a cooked meal.

I remember when I started cooking more at home when my mum was there, or when I started catering her retreats she stopped cooking as much when I would come back home. So I asked her why, “Why would I cook when my daughters a chef”, and I know she’s reading this now, maybe a little confused as to why I’m airing out this dirty laundry but for me it’s less about the food and more about who is cooking it. I’m sure she feels the same and I know she is beyond grateful when I’m excited for her to try a new dish.

But regardless, I will never make a chicken pie as good as hers, or be able to get my mash potato as smooth. If I’m honest (again) it makes the times that she is cooking for me or with me feel so much more important. She still has the same gas stove from the house I was born in, the meals that were fed to me, and made for me even when I didn’t feel like eating were made by her, on that same stove top. So watching her stir cacao in the morning before we read our cards, or getting a text telling me she left me a plate in the oven will always mean the world, made on that stove, and made by her.

My dad on the other hand won’t even let me touch a pan handle now. He will pour me a glass of a fancy soft drink he’s discovered and let me watch, maybe I’ll be allowed to pass the salt.

That’s the way it’s always been for us, food at his house was a carefully curated communal occasion. We would wait for one and other to get home and head out to the shops together, brainstorming and adapting as we walked the aisles - mainly looking out for the real good offers and the yellow stickers. Always ending the shop with a trip down the biscuit and chocolate aisle to stock up on the sweet treat or over to the alcohol so he could look if there was any new IPAs on the shelves. I used to really push the limit of what I could get to the checkout, slipping things into the basket as we went and finding a reason why I needed a specific item when I would eventually get caught. I wouldn’t always get what I want, sometimes I had too many sweets already or we really just wouldn’t have the money.

My dad made cooking fun, he taught me so much, they both did. Answered all my questions and once I moved out my dad would barely let the phone ring if I called asking how many days I could keep defrosted chicken for if I took it out on Saturday and it was now Monday.

I miss cooking with him, I miss cooking with them both.

So I guess this is my love letter - to my parents, to a home cooked meal. And an encouragement, too: to share meals in loving spaces, with people that have seen you through the hardest stages of your life.

And if no one comes to mind, do it for yourself. Light candles and cook a lovely meal. Some part of me always exhales when I do. As if my body remembers that this is what it means to be cared for.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for staying with me through this one. For allowing me to bare something I wasn’t sure I’d ever put into words. Something was holding me back from this series and I think we may have cracked it.

I refuse to let my habits from my past define me, the feelings I had towards food then is not how I choose to remember it now. Stick with me. There’s so much more to make.