SINGLE SERVE
For Sarah Tuck, life-changing circumstances meant piecing together the will and the means to comfort and nourish through food – now she's collated it all in a beautiful new cookbook.
Sarah Tuck has used her own heartbreak to come up with a cookbook to get others “back on track”.
According to Statistics New Zealand, one-person households are projected to be the fastest growing category here in Kiwiland. In fact, a quick squiz on the internet and you’ll find a number of articles from around the world talking about the extraordinary rise of those buttering their own toast, so to speak. Sometimes it’s a choice, and sometimes it’s not.
The latter is the situation Sarah Tuck found herself in when her relationship of 32 years ended abruptly. Right around the same time her youngest son left home. Cue empty rooms and devastation.
“It was really, really bad,” she says honestly. And honesty is a big part of why she chose to write her cookbook Coming Unstuck – recipes to get you back on track. “I purposely wanted it to be quite vulnerable because I wanted to say to people, ‘if you’re going through this shit, I totally understand.’”
As might be obvious, Sarah is a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is character, which is why the book is such a breath of fresh air. “Sometimes bad things happen – that's just irrefutable truth. Social media makes you feel like you're obliged to feel jolly all the time. Life's not like that. Shit happens to everyone at some stage,” she says.
While she shies away from words such as “journey”, “mindfulness” and “self-love”, Sarah is definitely an advocate for living in the moment. “If you’re going to have a drink, have it in a pretty glass, if you’re going to cook for yourself, take five minutes to think about it and make something really yummy.”
Of course, none of that was particularly possible when her marriage first broke up.
“I didn’t want to look after myself, I wanted to lie on the carpet and wail. But after three months, I did think ‘oh, I’m a bit peckish, what
should I eat? I can’t be bothered cooking’”. And so, the book was born to address this and the many other ups and downs of a new life.
One of the chapters is expressly targeted to those cooking for just themselves – the tonguein-cheek-ily named “sad-arse dinners for one”. Here you’ll find Fix-me-up Soup for when you feel like you should be doing something healthy for yourself – green and full of flavour; Evening-after-the-night-before Soup is for when you need comfort without being too hard on the system; salmon and edamame beans in an Asian dressing with brown rice makes you feel like “you are just a health goddess”, Sarah says; and then there’s gruyere and bacon tarts, handy in the freezer for when you need a bit of decadence. “It’s totally mood-driven,” she says. “This whole idea of feeling obliged to ‘take care of myself’? Well, sometimes I feel like that and sometimes I don’t.”
The adjustment from cooking for her family, including two sons, to cooking for one, was huge, to say the least. Practically and emotionally. The book addresses both. Sarah says, “There is empowerment in dining alone – being on your own, you don’t have to cook what other people want to eat. You can eat exactly what you feel like, and that’s what I mean about moods – because that is huge. There is real joy in that.”
Entertaining is also something Sarah derives joy from. She held her first dinner party at 16 when she convinced her mother to let her invite 12 people over for a sit-down dinner. Naturally, that inclination doesn't stop because you live alone. So the Sharing the Love chapter is for when you feel like company but don’t want to leave your guests unattended while you slave in the kitchen.
“The recipes in this section are easy. If you're on your own having people over, you don't want it to be stressful. You want it to be relaxed and so most of the stuff is done in advance. You don't have to do anything when people get there, except have a drink.”
While the book was written because Sarah became “unstuck” and is brutal in its honesty, there are also big doses of humour throughout and, ultimately, hope. As she writes: “Gradually the good days became way more common… I don’t lie down in the evening crying into the carpet anymore. It gets better.”
“There is empowerment in dining alone – being on your own, you don’t have to cook what other people want to eat. You can eat exactly what you feel like...”