Add Food to Your Story
The subject of food encompasses the cultural, nutritional and political. Let's add some food to your story writing.
Abandoned restaurant, Vancouver. Photo: Tanya Clarke 2020
Eat for Good
Let's write about food. You tried this back in April.
April doesn't seem very long ago but a quick look at my calendar tells me it was, in fact, six months ago. Since April, you will have eaten many meals, eaten a lot of snacks and drunk many beverages, alcoholic or not.
Day in and day out.
You probably have a routine for breakfast, one for lunch and one for dinner.
The subject of food encompasses the cultural, nutritional and political. Through your writing, this week, try to investigate your or your character's relationship with food using one of those three themes as an outline. But make your writing personal. What I mean by that is write the details, the small associations with food. What you’re not trying to do here is create a research paper.
Consider the importance of smell and taste, and how your food looks. For example, the sensation of biting into a cold, crisp apple or the feeling of a chewed-up peanut stuck in a filling.
Do you use cutlery or chopsticks or eat with your hands? Do you count calories? Why? How do you feel in your body when you think about food? Do you grow your own food? Run a farm or have some raised beds in your garden. Or is the local food hall your friend?
When thinking about this week’s post, I started writing out a list in a twenty-minute purge of words on the page. In amongst this chaotic jumble of images, I'm half-remembering some memories I could use in more of my writing. Hopefully, you can find the same.
Food
Family meals. TV dinners. Ready meals. Things we’re supposed to eat. Things we’re not.
Superfoods. Junk foods. Comfort food. Microwave food. Grow your food. Bake bread. Make jam. Make salsa. Make kimchi. Make yogurt. All those probiotics. Or prebiotics. We seem to need both.
Hang the pheasant for 28 days
Maybe it was shorter. A braise of pheasants, shot and killed, hanging in the outbuilding, beginning to smell. My Mum wondering what to do with them.
A hog roast. Plant-based diet. Or vegetarian. Vegan. Carnivore. Dairy-free. Gluten-free. Sugar-free. Fibre. Roughage. Protein. Good fats. Trans fats. Carbs. Are they good or bad?
I can’t seem to give up sugar
Drink water. Lots. Coffee, not so much. You can buy loose chamomile tea in the Persian supermarket.
Hot food. Mild food. Spicy food. The Mediterranean diet is best. So I hear.
Do you drink tea?
When I stopped drinking tea, I went cold turkey and suffered a tremendous headache for three consecutive days. I'd been drinking tea since I was 9 years old.
Coffee for one dollar
Frappucino, cappucino, americano, latte, espresso, drip. Tim Horton’s - the best coffee for one dollar. Poutine. What is it? Fries, cheese curds, gravy. Pickled eggs. Pickled onions. Pickled beetroot. Ginger, garlic, chilli, turmeric, cinnamon. All the herbs. Oregano, basil, rosemary, coriander or is it cilantro?
Is this a sweet potato or a yam?
I’m looking for courgettes. I mean zucchini. Ice cream. Chocolate. Lots of it. Can’t get enough of it.
Tuck box
School. Homemade fruit cake and peanut butter cookies. And crisps. Salt & vinegar or prawn cocktail? Or do you say chips? Oat milk is nicer than almond. Butter, unsalted. Chocolate fondants. A family favourite.
Why are we all allergic to food? Or intolerant? What is going on? I had acne. Advice - don't eat dairy. No gall bladder - no fats. But you need fats. Good fats. Not bad fats. Are bad fats animal fats?
Hollow legs
At school, they (the staff) were concerned I was anorexic. My body was thin and bony. Some said I looked as if a strong wind might blow me over. Someone put salt in the sugar bowl. I sprinkled it onto my ready brek. The unexpected taste made me spit my breakfast out. No more sugar on my cereal or in my tea again. Not in the four years I was at boarding school.
Toast
Thick pieces of white bread, the thicker the crust the better. Toasted, spread with butter and honey. Nutella arrived with a value much like gold, stolen by those that got there first. Large jars of Marmite. Coco Pops. Drinking the icy cold milk from the machine, made my teeth ache up right in to my brain. Packed lunch always sandwiches, a biscuit, one apple and one orange. Half-time oranges. Thirsty. Water. Oh yes. I remember. I should drink more water.
