The Domestic
Maternity hospitals have the best food, says Sophie White — although she admits this has a lot to do with the highly specific circumstances it’s served in
The best meal you’ll ever eat
If I am ever featured in the A Taste For
Life column, my neighbour in Appetites a few pages back, I have many of my answers ready to go. That’s not a hint to my colleague at A Taste For Life Towers, though should she be reading this, I’d like to state that my commitment to being a good interviewee would be unparalleled. I would be a joy, bringing succinct quotes — not to mention delicious samples of every dish referenced, for her to experience herself.
There is, sadly, one dish I’d be unable to conjure for her. It is the answer to the question: what is the meal you will always remember? It’s a meal that occurs in such a specific scenario that it cannot be recreated. I myself have had it just three times, and with Himself ’s impending vasectomy, I’m already mourning the fact that I’ll never have it again. It is the tea and toast that’s served after giving birth in hospital — no meal, from all-you-can-eat to Michelin-star, can touch it in terms of pleasure. It’s a collision of comfort, flavour and timing, a formula too delicate to ape.
I had it a few days ago after the epic entrance of Baby III. This time, I was a guest of our heroic maternity services for two days, and had the pleasure of a few more meals than usual. The Joy. I think my love of the food in Holles Street is wedded to my love of the scenario in general. Being in hospital to have a baby is not remotely like any of the other customarily shitty reasons for which one would be in hospital. You’re not strictly sick, as such; you are being petted and cosseted by an army of reassuring and eminently kind
“I was a guest of our heroic maternity services and had the pleasure of a few more meals than usual”
people. You’re scheduled to within an inch of your life. It’s unlike any other scenario in adult life in that, all going well, you get to be helpless for a brief window without an attendant calamity to blight it — a dream for the average adult.
Himself thinks I’m the only bizarre person who enjoys it. This week, he watched me gleefully set up my little curtained cubicle as though I was moving into a very tiny, oddly public little apartment for myself. He thinks it’s a weakness of character that I become so institutionalised so rapidly, and said as much one day, as he witnessed me thieving tiny pats of butter from an unattended catering cart and secreting them back to my stash in my cubicle.
“Why?” he shook his head. “Look, they’re just a little light on the butter,” I respond. “It’s the only constructive criticism I have.”
“Would you not just prefer to be home with your own generous supply of butter?”
“Well, sure that’d be grand, but this way I get to score ill-gotten butter, which is a very tasty genre of butter.”
He sighs: “Of course.”
Now that I’m home, the butter is plentiful, though lacking the intrigue. I am glad to be on the receiving end of Himself ’s culinary talents — this recipe is pork stew for the soul.