Does it ever feel as if you are a former citizen of the lost city of Atlantis? As if you come from a world that has sunk without a trace beneath the waves, never to be seen again? I’ve been feeling that way a lot lately as I look through Google’s handy reminders of what I was doing two, three or four years ago. As the Covid-19 virus started its world tour in March 2020, governments implemented lockdowns and shut down what we had until then taken for granted as normal life. No more eating out; no more family get-togethers; no more coffee breaks with work colleagues. For many of us, food became our primary form of entertainment (other than Netflix and Amazon!). We baked banana bread; we worked our way through Deliveroo; we actually cooked lunch as opposed to grabbing a sandwich from Pret; we treated ourselves to cocktail hour quarantinis. And all this meant that our eating habits changed. A number of studies have (unsurprisingly) shown that our comfort food snacking and alcohol consumption increased during lockdown – but conversely, so did our awareness of the importance of healthy eating and the impact of food on our health. Click here for a full portion
Antillean
When I was about ten years old, my older sister (then in her mid 20s) decided that she was off to adventure and left South Africa on an extended working holiday. These were the early 1980s before migration became as hot a potato as it is now and work visas were easier to come by. […]
Click here for a full portionFestive roast lamb with pomegranate glaze
Have you ever thought about the difference between culture and tradition – or even wondered whether there is even a difference between them? They are definitely intertwined and both inform and influence each other – for example, a tradition can grow to be so widespread that it becomes an accepted part of a culture. But […]
Click here for a full portionRustic blood orange and pistachio galettes
[Reading this in a feed reader like Feedly or Flipboard? Cooksister’s feed is being updated to https://www.cooksister.com/feed – please resubscribe in your reader of choice!] When people start getting wistful about the “good old days” and how thing were so much better when they were young/before the world wars/before the Rolling Stones were born, I […]
Click here for a full portionCauliflower steak Welsh rarebit
What’s in a name, asked William Shakespeare, as he reasoned that a rose called something different (a smurgunkle, for instance) would still essentially remain the same sweet-smelling flower. Clearly, Billy-boy was not in my home town last week to witness the drama, laughter, tears, celebration, memes and confusion that greeted the city’s name change from […]
Click here for a full portionThe Melusine
“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.” Celebrated science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin wrote this in 1969, but in the middle of this period of unprecedented world uncertainty I find myself turning the phrase over and over in my mind like a pebble in […]
Click here for a full portionPotted smoked salmon with quick pickle apple slaw
Can you remember what your view of the world was like; what your fears were; and what you looked forward to in the future when you were seven years old? Many of us might have recollections if something particularly traumatic or triumphant happened to us at that age, but for most of us it would […]
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