The new normal
“I longed for the chaotic normality of the family meal”
LATELY, I’VE BEEN THINKING A LOT ABOUT FAMILIES AND FOOD.
Not just our food heritage – the recipes we cherish because they are the legacy of those we love. Or the dishes that evoke memories of family occasions. I was thinking about the unremarkable, everyday meals we cook and eat with our families, the ones that are so routine they often feel like a chore.
And then I remember the early months of the pandemic. My overriding memory of that time was how much I missed my mom and my sister. (They were in quarantine after a trip to the US.) I also missed Tina, our wondeful, gentle nanny whose patience with Holly, especially at mealtimes, amazes me every day.
I missed the ritual of weekend braais, of meeting for pizza or just having my mom pop round for a Sunday supper. I missed the jokes and even the arguments. I missed the food.
Exactly two years ago, we were finishing the first remote issue of TASTE, May 2020. We’d started making videos of ourselves at home, cooking with the pantry staples the nation had stockpiled – beans, pasta, soda bread. The Salad Dodger and I had bought a chest freezer (I don’t know how we lived without it) and Holly and I baked banana bread and a “finger-berry” pudding for Uncle John’s birthday, which he never got to eat, even though he edited the video.
We didn’t celebrate Mother’s Day that year as we normally would. We stopped eating dinner at the table. We argued over whose turn it was to work and whose turn it was to push the Cherub to the shops with a bag of fake groceries hanging off the pram. I remember longing for the chaotic normality of a family meal, the chance to cook for other people, or have other people cook for me. I will never take that for granted again.
I still miss the things we lost. Yes, our new way of working means everyday cooking is so much easier – I see Abi’s apricot harissa roast chicken (p 20) or Hannah’s shank pie (p 89) in my inbox and either immediately take a chicken out of the freezer or put in a Woolies Dash order. But it also means I don’t get to arrive at the office and smell a coffee loaf (p 77) coming out of the oven or be able to stand around with colleagues sampling rusks and debating the merits of aniseed.
Two years later, we have recreated the TASTE kitchen and we see each other more often than we did pre-vaccine, but we’ve also had to adapt and adaptation happens for a reason.
I am so grateful I have a family to cook for, even when I don’t feel like cooking. I’m grateful for all the dishes I learnt (from TASTE!) when I had to cook. Every. Single. Night. I’ll admit, as the mother of a three-year-old then, I loved ordering restaurant boxes and being able to eat at “Overture” and “La Tête” more often than I could before. But now, when I eat out, I feel privileged to be able to sit still and have lovely people bring me delicious food cooked by someone else and fill my glass and do the washing up and I never,
ever think the price for that is too high.
So, whether you’re taking the mamas and the papas out, or spoiling them at home; whether you’re planning the ultimate Eid menu (p 94) or just need a week’s worth of suppers that won’t require resuscitation come Friday, this is the issue for you. And yes, it was made at home. Can’t you tell?