I guess cooking is my fandom now?
Jun. 10th, 2020 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12These 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.
'Dresses Like White Elephants' — Meg Elison. I couldn't quite work out what was going on here. It seemed to be about a drag contest, with wedding dresses worn by the contestants which gave them the memories of the dressmakers, and somehow this act of wearing the dresses unburdened the dressmakers of any painful memories. I found the whole thing a bit incoherent.
'Burn or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super' — A.T. Greenblatt. A guy with superpowers ends up working as the accountant for a superhero vigilante team. This story hinges on one of my least-favourite tropes (superpowers as a metaphor for real-world oppression).
'Where the Sky Is Silver and the Earth Is Brass' — Sonya Taafe. This was gorgeous, and I absolutely loved it. A Holocaust survivor and former resistance partisan emigrates to the US, and has a demon for a companion. The language was beautiful, and there was so much intricate stuff going on. A really, really satisfying story to read.
'We Chased the Sirens' — Suzanne Walker. Abused, traumatised or otherwise wronged women take to the seas on a ship, seeking to join the mythological Sirens as a release from their pain.
'The Girlfriend's Guide to Gods' — Maria Dahvana Headley. This weaves the experiences and youthful heartbreaks of love with Greek myth, and descents to underworlds both physical and psychological. It wasn't exactly subtle, but it was cleverly done.
What is getting you through the current ... everything?
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.
'Dresses Like White Elephants' — Meg Elison. I couldn't quite work out what was going on here. It seemed to be about a drag contest, with wedding dresses worn by the contestants which gave them the memories of the dressmakers, and somehow this act of wearing the dresses unburdened the dressmakers of any painful memories. I found the whole thing a bit incoherent.
'Burn or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super' — A.T. Greenblatt. A guy with superpowers ends up working as the accountant for a superhero vigilante team. This story hinges on one of my least-favourite tropes (superpowers as a metaphor for real-world oppression).
'Where the Sky Is Silver and the Earth Is Brass' — Sonya Taafe. This was gorgeous, and I absolutely loved it. A Holocaust survivor and former resistance partisan emigrates to the US, and has a demon for a companion. The language was beautiful, and there was so much intricate stuff going on. A really, really satisfying story to read.
'We Chased the Sirens' — Suzanne Walker. Abused, traumatised or otherwise wronged women take to the seas on a ship, seeking to join the mythological Sirens as a release from their pain.
'The Girlfriend's Guide to Gods' — Maria Dahvana Headley. This weaves the experiences and youthful heartbreaks of love with Greek myth, and descents to underworlds both physical and psychological. It wasn't exactly subtle, but it was cleverly done.
What is getting you through the current ... everything?