I guess cooking is my fandom now?

These past two weeks have caused a steady depletion of my mental energy, to the extent that I've retreated into a world of chefs and cooking. I've always cooked as an expression of love, and I always find reading cookbooks, chefs' Instagram accounts, and above all interviews and podcasts with professional chefs to be really cosy and relaxing. And so for the most part I've bounced between Nadiya Hussain's Instagram highlights and random interviews/panel discussions involving Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, or both. (There is some method in this madness: I was given the Jerusalem cookbook as a Christmas present, and the Falastin cookbook as a random gift by Matthias early on during lockdown, so I have been basically swimming in za'atar, pomegrante molasses, tahini, and the other repeat ingredients of the Ottolenghi/Tamimi oeuvre for the past few months.)

My favourite so far was this panel discussion between Tamimi and Ottolenghi several years ago when they were promoting their Jerusalem cookbook. They were constantly asked the most ridiculous things (and people seemed to want them to act as some sort of poster children for Israeli-Palestinian peaceful coexistence, as if their own personal circumstances, friendship and business partnership could somehow be expanded outwards to an entire fraught region; they resisted this as unrealistically sentimental and simplistic), but ultimately it's just an hour of two people geeking out about food and flavour. I feel their pain re: those dreadful premade refridgerated falafel sold in British supermarkets, which are an abomination.

I say that I've only had mental energy for cooking and foodie stuff, but that's not 100 per cent true. I've also read a bit of short fiction, mainly the newly unlocked stories in the current issue of Uncanny Magazine. My thoughts on all are behind the cut — every story is free to read online.

( Five short stories behind the cut )

What is getting you through the current ... everything?