A forgotten file: I need milk

An expansion on the unpublished food diary I wrote for The Fortified Gazette

Ice cream for breakfast – 12/03/2023

Last night I marched across the road to the big Tesco’s and amongst other things picked up a tub of Mackie’s traditional ice cream, which I am now having for breakfast this not-morning (another late start). I’ve been having a serious craving for something recently, I don’t know what. This ice cream seems to be doing me some good, even though the flat isn’t warm enough for me to have it without shivering a bit.

I was introduced to Mackie’s by my best friend in December when I went up to see her for an impromptu visit. We scooped the last of a diminished tub into our mouths and I was instantly charmed by the endlessly rich dairy-ness of it. Ice cream that tastes like cream? A wonder! Since I’ve sung its praises, contrasting it with Ben and Jerries’ which I now declare to be some of the worst ice cream in the world – all sugar, bad mouthfeel, no milk, no satisfaction.

I like milk and all its products. Milk, cream, glace are textures of childhood. Cheese and butter are savoury staples of my diet. My favourite author, Deborah Levy, wrote a book called ‘Hot Milk’ which focuses on the relationship between a mother, and a daughter who doesn’t know how to separate herself from her mother’s need for care. When the loss of a close friendship devastated me, it was Allie X’s song ‘Milk’ that wrapped me in soft white and woollen comfort. Somewhere in my writing notebook I have a scene from a story that’ll likely never be published titled ‘Dairy Night’.

You can see it’s a bit of a preoccupation. I think I’m always looking for dairy to comfort me. It’s a craving the same way that I crave to be near the sea and under it. The richness of it weighs me down. Yet it has a transience in its more liquid forms. It dances across the tongue and is wicked away quickly. Jewish laws of kosher reflect this. One is not permitted to mix milk and meat in a dish or have both at the same dinner table, but the time you wait between eating dairy and meat is shorter than between meat and dairy. Meat and its fat linger. Some wait up to six hours after eating meat to consume any dairy product. For “soft” cheeses, milk, cream, it is enough to eat something pareve (neither meat nor milk based) and drink some water.

Mackie’s ice cream tastes nutritious but in a medieval way. In a “fat is a really effective energy store” way. In a “glucose + oxygen → carbon dioxide + water + ATP energy with a lot of steps in between” way. In a “I deserve nice things and food is for pleasure” way. I guess that’s what I’ve learnt from thinking and writing about my eating habits all week – to focus on my happiness. That’s not to say I’ll be having ice cream for breakfast forever, nor will my parents be very happy if they find out (they can’t trust me to eat “normally” as I’ve shown anaconda-like tendencies when it comes to nutrition ever since I was a baby who slept instead of eating), but if you don’t tell I won’t either.

When I signed up to write a week long food diary for The Fortified Gazette I was fully aware that such a process would expose a complicated knot of anxieties around food to an audience larger than I’m used to. Such awareness didn’t make the experience of writing any easier. I started off strong with an examination of what religious fasting means to me. The next day I documented the luxurious spread at my friend’s engagement party that doubled as a purim seudah. But once the camera pivoted to me, to what I was doing in my home, I crumbled. On the Wednesday, I wrote:

I dearly wish I could be one of those people who has put together eating habits. My sister is like that. When we lived together during the lockdowns, she did most of the cooking, despite working a highly stressful and irregular schedule as a junior doctor (I’m not proud of my lack of contribution). She has that superpower where you hand her a random selection of ingredients and she can make something good of it. I’m totally the opposite. I enjoy baking but cooking meals is at best a neutral experience for me, at worst actively distressing if I’m having to do it for someone else because I’m scared of them not liking what I made.

I’m disorganised. Once an object enters the fridge or a cupboard, it ceases to exist in my mind. It’s a major contributor as to why I never eat meat at home. Forgotten vegetables are generally degrade in less disgusting forms than meats. I struggle to feed myself simply because overcoming the question, “what would you like to eat?” is such a gargantuan hurdle that I get decision paralysis until it’s too late in the evening to cook anything. I find it much easier when I’m told what to make.

To be honest about this with you, the reader, feels a little like being naked. I applied to write for The Fortified Gazette all the way back in October 2022. I had promised myself that I would be good and interesting this week, that I’d show off what an accomplished adult I am by presenting a host of visual, oral, olfactory delicacies. Instead, you get to see me as I am.

For some, food is a site of joy. To me, food is almost always a site of anxiety. Joy is me getting lucky.

As with anything in this life food, which could be a perfectly neutral topic, is entangled with a nimiety of social complexes. Food and class. Food and gender. Food and ethnicity. Food and beauty. Food and intelligence. Like the monsters of literature, we deposit our cultural anxieties into the culinary realm because food is a universal interface between the self and other. In controlling and optimising our plates, we aim to control and optimise ourselves. Goji berries for a brilliant mind. Lemon water for glassy skin. Overnight oats every day at 5 am for self discipline. Careful! E numbers are bad for you! Ultraprocessed foods will be the death of us all! Terrifyingly, the closer we look the more we understand that such means of control are a neoliberal myth. Regardless of how dangerous ultraprocessed foods may be, their prevelance in our lives cannot be escaped without overhauling our relationship with domestic labour, working hours, farming industries, the supermarket. Our bodies are not designed for weight loss contrary to diet culture’s insistence. Drink all the lemon water you like — aging is coming for us all.

Moving through the world as a woman I think there was never a possibility of me developing a healthy relationship with food, which is a very sad thing to say. Teenaged girls learn food as a source of danger (read: weight gain) as beauty transforms into a currency we’re desperate to accrue. Then comes cooking and its inability to break from a history of unpaid labour and gender expectations. I’m sure I’m not alone in the slightly misguided sense that to learn how to cook well and frequently is to capitulate to patriarchy, to consign oneself to the kitchen. It is for this reason that I hate when men on dates ask me if I know how to cook. The question is inherently loaded. We are yet to disentangle Woman from the ability to nourish and nurture. In asking if I can cook, I sense these men examining me as a marketplace good, picking me up, placing me on a set of steel scales. How Wife is she? How much work can I extract from her?

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You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together. If your date makes the experience uptight and restrictive, well, the sex is going to be horrible too. Eating is best when there is spontaneity and variety. I'm very type-A, and many things in my life are about control and domination, but eating should be a submissive experience, where you let down your guard and enjoy the ride.

I don't have much patience for people who are self-conscious about the act of eating, and it irritates me when someone denies themselves the pleasure of a bloody hunk of steak or a pungent French cheese because of some outdated nonsense about what's appropriate or attractive. Stop worrying about how your breath's going to smell, whether there's beurre blanc on your face, or whether ordering the braised pork belly will make you look fat. Eating with abandon couldn't be more of a turn-on: it shows that you're comfortable with yourself.

A perfect date is with a person who eats without fear, prejudice, or concerns about his or her appearance. I remember one of my first dates with my wife: She ordered a six-pound lobster. I sat there, enraptured, watching her suck every bit of meat from it—she got a standing ovation from the floor staff. She's the kind of woman who will order filet mignon as an appetizer followed by a T-bone steak. Her fearless, open-minded approach to food is completely alluring.

Anthony Bourdain for Cosmopolitan

This interview excerpt, like a javelin, pierced me straight through when I came across it on social media. I, who feels a flush of pleasure when someone comments on how little I’ve eaten. I, who prefers not to eat in front of those I don’t know well. At first, I wanted to yell at him. “Of course you can say that. You’re a man! You have no idea what it’s like! I refuse to be a Cool Girl! I refuse to perform nonchalance for male gratification!” Soon enough, I recognised that my response was insecurity rearing its head like an ugly hydra, spitting sentiments of poison. Yes, his words were a javelin, one I could use to slay this monster. If neoliberalism sells food to us as control, Bourdain deliberately undermines this ideal. To eat and eat honestly, is to submit to our desires and allow our most animal, thereby most human, selves to run free.

Cooking and eating intuitively is an act of trust. In doing so, my brain surrenders to my body and biome and accepts their superior knowledge of what will keep me running happily. This is perhaps the primary means by which food acts as a point of connection. It roots us into our own physicality, then, when shared, gently intertwines us with other people. “I love you. I want us to both eat well.”¹

Tamino, tangerines - 09/03/2023

The first time I saw Tamino live was in November of last year. The opener, Loverman, lulled me into a false sense of security with his keening voice and acoustic guitar. The performance quickly turned acrobatic, the singer rolling across the stage – literally. Out came a tambourine, a swagger to his step. He ended his performance by teaching us a song and disappearing into the crowd, never to be seen again.

The wait between the opener and main act can be lonely and boring. I went to this concert alone but had the privilege of standing next to a person who was so warm and open that we became fast friends by the time Loverman graced the stage. We entertained ourselves up in the stalls with conversation. In the standing section below someone was blowing bubbles, drawing everyone in the venue into a game. How long can the bubble go before it pops? Some would flounder, struggling to make it even a metre higher than the hoop from which they came. Others soared, buoyed on invisible swirls of conditioned air. We cheered for the bubbles that went highest, let out shouts of joy at near misses, aww-ed in disappointment at each one that burst. I’ll never know who exactly made the fantastic decision to bring bubbles to a concert, but it’s left a lasting impression on me.

I like things like that. I like being part of a collective, all the more if I can’t see every face or know any names but can feel each spirit in the room bound together by our shared human behaviours. It electrifies the bones. I want to be reminded that humans innately love each other first and that discord comes later.

The friend I made in November is the person I attended the Tamino concert with again today. Once in the venue my friend and I started up a conversation with the two people in front of us. There’s no easier place to get to know people than in a concert venue waiting for something to happen. The opener came and went by (Isaac Gracie if you’re wondering) and we settled ourselves in for another half hour of waiting. My friend offered me a percy pig, to which I obviously said yes.

There’s a correct way to eat percy pigs, in the same way that there’s a correct way to eat gingerbread men and gummy bears. You must inflict as much pain as possible on your victim. Head first, arms second and, in the case of Percy who has neither, bite off one ear and then the other.

Once the pig had been sent to my stomach for further annihilation, I brought out the pack of tangerines I bought before the show and distributed them to those immediately around me. It was very pleasing to be graced with the surprised face of someone who did not expect a complete stranger to be feeding them as it blooms into a smile. A tangerine is a small enough offering that most people had no qualms about accepting, so I found I had a lot of takers. It’s an edible pocket of joy for both the giver and receiver. At one point I was tapped on the shoulder by someone who had seen their neighbours chewing on citrussy goodness and wanted in. I was delighted to hand out one more.

Tamino was beyond fantastic, possibly better than the first time but I’m honestly not that interested in comparing. A good thing is a good thing. What struck me this time round, close to the stage as I was, is that the act of making music with other people live can be one of consumption. You digest the sounds as you make them – hear it, feel it, regurgitate it. No one made this clearer to me than the drummer, Ruben Vanhoutte, who was laying down the beat and then eating it up, making it part of himself so that you could see the music all over his body.

Will anyone remember the tangerines I shared when such talent was displayed after? It’s silly but I hope so, if only to enable others to do the same. I was inspired by a face I couldn’t see and their bubbles. Take this as permission to pass the spirit of sharing on.

One day, I will have a kitchen of my own. It’s something I often dream of — the gas cooker, the lamplight hanging over the island, stools to accommodate observers, the bite of a knife against a chopping board. I will host dinner parties, drawing from my mother’s abundant expertise, and satisfy myself with disappearing into the low thrum of others’ conversations. One day, the kitchen and its contents will excite me more than it ever hurt me. I’ll give back a hundred times more love than I have received at countless tables.

rusty xx

1. From Christopher Citro’s Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled With Shrieks.