Conscious, contemporary food writing & reporting - the intro.
some of the writers and thinkers I turn to for well-rounded writing about food, and everything that writing and thinking about food encompasses
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What do you think, what do you feel, when you read the words:
food writing
What does that mean to you when you hear it, if it means anything?
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It’s the one genre that I always turn to when I’m not feeling okay, and it’s the one genre that never fails to make me feel like I’ve been wrapped up in a warm blanket and that, actually, everything is fine.
Is it scientifically sound to say that I think it really does lower my heart rate just opening a Nigel Slater book?
Of course, there is place and necessity for this side of food writing: warm, the cosy, the comforting, the titillating, the romantic, the invigorating food writing; the instructional, the recommendation, the checklist. The food writing that many of us probably associate as food writing.
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that which brings us back to our childhoods, to moments and relationships long since gone;
to summer holidays fizzing with newness abroad, or lounging and exploring closer to home;
bottling homemade sugo on a balmy August Italian evening; the wooden barrels almost overflowing; the scent of tomato heavy in the warm evening air;
perched on the edge of the pavement devouring juicy wedges of watermelon at the end of a meal; the adults still settled around the long laden table, the tablecloth stained and well- loved, as the children begin to scatter;
the excitement and mania of houseguests picking at plates of nibbles; seasonal specialties of Christmasses and Easters and birthdays;
evening meals, some rushed, others elaborate, some “spag bol” in front of the tiny, staticky telly in the kitchen before homework time;
special occasion breakfasts of pancakes sprinkled with lemon and sugar;
picnics, beaches, parks, towels and blankets strewn across the sand, the grass, baskets and lunchboxes, clingfilm and tinfoil, flasks and bottles, brimming with old favourites;
celebratory meals out to old regulars, new discoveries (and always a pizza for the table);
snacks swapped and shared between friends at school lunches, hands diving into boxes of warm, salty popcorn at the cinema, roadtrip fly-by staple stops (and maple pecan plaits) from Spar/Lidl/pick your poison;
tea and biscuits in front of the telly, packets strewn, quoting and laughing;
crumpets, speared on a fork, hovered tentatively over the fire, slathered liberally in butter that pools in the mini sinkholes.
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The food writing that stokes nostalgia, makes us feel like children again, reminds us of simpler times. The food writing that excites, that peps us up when we need something to look forward to, inspires us to get into the kitchen and create, to recreate, to discover. To explore, to experiment, to cook. Food writing as adjacent to travel writing - that teases our tastebuds through words, sending us Googling Michelin star restaurants, agriturismos, food tours in countries whose food cultures we’ve read about, dabbled in, we’ve long wished to immerse ourselves in.
Food writing that can throw us back into a time we’d rather not remember right now; that can submerge us under waves of grief, a reminder of a time, a life, a relationship, a moment, a version of ourselves, lost. Because food writing is writing about people and about memory and about loss. Food writing reminds us that food is history and nostalgia and meaning and symbol.
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But: this sort of food writing is just one piece of a puzzle. It doesn’t, can’t, exist on its own, without acknowledging another side of food writing:
The most worthwhile contemporary food writing acknowledges the reality that food writing needs a spikier, starker, more sober side. Sometimes, it has to set aside emotion and nostalgia, and deal with the hard facts that we often don’t want to grapple with.
Good food writing is also political writing, climate writing, nature writing, culture writing, writing about class, gender, and all forms of social justice. It weaves these with the personal.
The personal exists within those contexts in the first place. But, spiky doesn’t mean inaccessible; it doesn’t mean cold. Stark doesn’t mean difficult and uninviting. Sober doesn’t mean humourless or boring. Politics and climate and gender and class don’t mean preachy, or didactic, or unreadable.
This food writing is still warm, it is still humorous, it is still affecting, and it is honest.
The best food writers of our time are the ones incorporating it all, in varying degrees, in their writing. This is a place where I want to share a list of the writers and thinkers I always go back to for this.
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To very briefly underline the above bolded statement, to explain why I say that: the way we feed ourselves, the way we are fed, is the biggest driver of, and a key way to make an urgent impact on, many of the ongoing and looming crises that form the backdrop to this moment in time.
Underlying these crises, those of climate, biodiversity, health, social justice, is food. The way it is produced, supplied and valued; our access to it, time and willingness to work with it; lack of awareness and understanding; lack of interest and support to be aware or to understand; expectation of it, disconnect from it, dysfunctional, love-hate relationships with it.
I’ll write more in-depth words about this in an upcoming post but, for now, I want to keep it short in order to focus on my list - a list that is starting off short and sweet, but that I’ll keep adding to - of writers who are engaging with everything that it means to write about food in this world. And, yes, that includes the warm, fuzzy side, too! Because, to talk about one doesn’t mean to exclude the other. It just means to place the romantic alongside the realistic - too often, we don’t want to look at, or talk about, the latter.
But, both are essential in order to have a well-rounded understanding of what it actually means when we say: food.
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🍋 Click here for the list. I thought it would be better to put the list in its own post rather than having to scroll down past that intro each time.
Thank you for reading 🌼
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