Food for thought

 It has been few days since Julien died, I am at the supermarket at the pot noodles aisle, as I stare at the them, I think to myself  "I'd better stock up on those". I lost half stone (good) after Julien died because I could not bring myself to eat (bad). I knew I could not carry on like this, I needed to be healthy and for that to happen I needed to cook.

I always had a good relationship with food, food to me equals joy. Food was something to share, to savour and I have many happy memories around food.

There was the time when we all went to Roquefort and my dad ordered tripe, you see the menu was in French and he assumed he could read well enough to order by himself, so he didn't ask Julien what that was. You needed to see his face when the waiter placed a plate of tripe smothered in roquefort cheese in front of him...we all promptly burst out laughing. Some people around us could not help but smile too, complete strangers smiling at us, well, more at my dad.

Then there was the time when my parents, my sister and I went to Slovenia to spend Christmas there, we drove around the mountains and then decided to stop at a small restaurant for lunch. The place was  a family run business not prepared for tourists at all, the menu was in Slovenian and totally unintelligible. I ordered what I thought was pepperoni pizza, and I was served pizza , only thing was that the pizza was totally covered with a colourful selection of peppers and chilies. I methodically  picked the chilies, but occasionally one or two went unnoticed, I drank a lot of water that day but my family seemed delighted at my ordeal.

Julien and I often cooked together.  He would prepare amazing sauces, like any good French person, but they often lacked spices or salt, I would sneakily add more spices as soon as he turned his back. On his return he would try the sauce again and demand if I had been fiddling with it , which I would vehemently deny. 

My love affair with food would also spill over books and movies; I loved the movies Ramen Girl and the Mexican  Como Agua para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate), both movies portray heartbreak but also love.  In the Mexican movie, the protagonist Tita could not marry the love of her life, who instead marries her sister. Tita cooks the food for the wedding as she is an excellent cook, she cries and her tears fall in the food, making all wedding guests sick. I am not going all Eat, pray and love (to be honest I hated that book) but I believe that we can express our emotions through food.  As you can imagine the main emotion I felt after Julien died was sadness.

However,  I needed to break away from the cycle of grief and not eating.  I decided I needed to create something to look forward to, which came in the shape of date nights for myself every Friday. On a Friday I would cook a delicious meal accompanied by wine (Malbec for those that know me). I started looking forward to my Fridays. It was my moment. I then joined WAY to Cook (a subgroup of Widowed and Young) and I found I had to make more of an effort with food, I could not share pictures of Pot Noodles.  

The group was lighthearted and fun, and eventually food became joyful and with joy came friends.  A few from the group.

Never doubt the healing properties of food;  food has a way to warm the heart, calm the mind and lift the spirits.