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Food and ritual: regardless of where we come from, there are rituals that involve food. What do these rituals mean to you? What are your favorites? If you could invent a ritual involving food, what would it be? What would be on the menu? Who would be your dream guests?
Luke
I guess it would have been three weeks after Walker moved in. I’d more than noticed him by then, and I’d taken myself off out to a club to try and, well, distract myself. Not overly proud of myself for it, and in any case it was grimly and hopelessly unsuccessful.
I spent an hour trying to find that mystical thing : a black cab willing to drive south of the river, and in the end I just waited for the tubes to open. By the time I got back I was frozen, so instead of going straight to bed I went in hunt of coffee.
Next thing I know, there’s Walker, chirpy as anything, bustling round the kitchen whistling. I kid you not. Whistling. You would not believe the feast that man knocked up in about 10 minutes flat –eggs, bacon, tomatoes – the works. Dished up and sat down next to me, all ‘cheer up mate– there’ll be other nights’. I think that I didn’t want to kill him may be proof positive that I was falling hard and fast even then.
And that’s where Jenna found us, setting the world to rights over tea and toast and fried breakfasts, and she set down to join us – sent Walker leaping up to whip up some more eggs for her, and coffee with cream, just the way she takes it.
That’s how it started – our Sunday breakfasts. Doesn’t much matter how busy we get, the three of us take that time to sit down and talk and share the first meal of the day, like a family.
Walker
My gran always used to say that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and woe betide anyone who wasn’t sat down at the table, hands washed and hair brushed by 7 on the dot. Of course she always used to dish up porridge and I can’t stand the stuff. On the weekends, though, once you’d paid your dues and eaten your bowl of glutinous bland goop, there’s be poached kippers, say, or the creamiest scrambled eggs you’ve ever had the fortune to taste. I grew up knowing the most important thing for a family is to eat together, and to start the day right.
Of course no normal person these days has time to cook breakfast of a morning. I normally figure I’m doing well if I have time to grab a bowl of corn flakes on a workday. Sunday’s though – ever since I moved out of my parents – Sunday’s I cook breakfast.
Neither of these two here are early birds, and I think the first time we ate breakfast together it was a late night for Luke rather than early morning. I do believe that’s the first time we ever had a good long chat as well – you’ll see the value of a proper breakfast then?
So that’s our ritual – sitting down as a household – plus whoever’s ended up spending the night – and eating a proper cooked breakfast, just like my gran always said.
Jenna
Sunday’s are our compromise. It’s entirely indecent the hour Walker would want to be dishing up, but there’s a routine to it now – almost a ritual. So long as he wakes me up with a mug of good rich coffee, and no one expects me to help with the cooking at that ungodly hour, we’re all set.
It’s not necessarily fancy food, but it’s got to be good. Real coffee. Fresh juice. Free range eggs and real cream and actual full-calorie butter. Midsummer morning it was thick Greek yogurt with warm peaches and sun-ripened English strawberries. First weekend there was frost it was kedgeree.
There is something ritualistic about it : a pattern to the events and the roles, and that sense of – if I say sacred space you’ll take me for a New Age loon. A sense that it’s more than just sustenance for the body that we’re sharing.
Luke
I guess it would have been three weeks after Walker moved in. I’d more than noticed him by then, and I’d taken myself off out to a club to try and, well, distract myself. Not overly proud of myself for it, and in any case it was grimly and hopelessly unsuccessful.
I spent an hour trying to find that mystical thing : a black cab willing to drive south of the river, and in the end I just waited for the tubes to open. By the time I got back I was frozen, so instead of going straight to bed I went in hunt of coffee.
Next thing I know, there’s Walker, chirpy as anything, bustling round the kitchen whistling. I kid you not. Whistling. You would not believe the feast that man knocked up in about 10 minutes flat –eggs, bacon, tomatoes – the works. Dished up and sat down next to me, all ‘cheer up mate– there’ll be other nights’. I think that I didn’t want to kill him may be proof positive that I was falling hard and fast even then.
And that’s where Jenna found us, setting the world to rights over tea and toast and fried breakfasts, and she set down to join us – sent Walker leaping up to whip up some more eggs for her, and coffee with cream, just the way she takes it.
That’s how it started – our Sunday breakfasts. Doesn’t much matter how busy we get, the three of us take that time to sit down and talk and share the first meal of the day, like a family.
Walker
My gran always used to say that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and woe betide anyone who wasn’t sat down at the table, hands washed and hair brushed by 7 on the dot. Of course she always used to dish up porridge and I can’t stand the stuff. On the weekends, though, once you’d paid your dues and eaten your bowl of glutinous bland goop, there’s be poached kippers, say, or the creamiest scrambled eggs you’ve ever had the fortune to taste. I grew up knowing the most important thing for a family is to eat together, and to start the day right.
Of course no normal person these days has time to cook breakfast of a morning. I normally figure I’m doing well if I have time to grab a bowl of corn flakes on a workday. Sunday’s though – ever since I moved out of my parents – Sunday’s I cook breakfast.
Neither of these two here are early birds, and I think the first time we ate breakfast together it was a late night for Luke rather than early morning. I do believe that’s the first time we ever had a good long chat as well – you’ll see the value of a proper breakfast then?
So that’s our ritual – sitting down as a household – plus whoever’s ended up spending the night – and eating a proper cooked breakfast, just like my gran always said.
Jenna
Sunday’s are our compromise. It’s entirely indecent the hour Walker would want to be dishing up, but there’s a routine to it now – almost a ritual. So long as he wakes me up with a mug of good rich coffee, and no one expects me to help with the cooking at that ungodly hour, we’re all set.
It’s not necessarily fancy food, but it’s got to be good. Real coffee. Fresh juice. Free range eggs and real cream and actual full-calorie butter. Midsummer morning it was thick Greek yogurt with warm peaches and sun-ripened English strawberries. First weekend there was frost it was kedgeree.
There is something ritualistic about it : a pattern to the events and the roles, and that sense of – if I say sacred space you’ll take me for a New Age loon. A sense that it’s more than just sustenance for the body that we’re sharing.