Time is like water
+ exciting Oreo news, a new standard of restaurant work, and the difference between Jamie Oliver's school dinners and Marcus Rashford's school dinners
Nice Pear: a weekly(ish) feminist foodletter | Issue #014 | 22 November 2020
Hello!
Time seems to move like water at the moment. Sometimes it rushes towards me, so fast and forceful that I could be swept away or pulled under. Sometimes it just seeps through the day, drip-drip-dripping so I don’t see it rising until its almost over my head.
Last January, I travelled to Amsterdam for a long weekend (another example of time being watery: A weekend is a weekend, whether it’s long or short is the difference between the glass being half-empty or half-full).
Packing a bag, getting on a plane, aimlessly wandering unfamiliar streets, staying in a little hotel, crisscrossing the city on trams and by foot to eat in a specific restaurant that was so crowded we perched on high stools to eat at the bar, walking into a pub we pass by that looks appealing because it is full of laughing, drinking strangers. Alien concepts now, less than a year later.
All this was simultaneously so long ago it could have floated to me in a dream, and so tangibly close I could pick it up and taste it (okay, maybe this water metaphor is spreading a little thin now).
All of this to say, I miss my family, I miss my friends, I even miss my coworkers. I miss my favourite restaurants and my local pub, I miss popping to the shops and meeting up for a cuppa. I miss the familiar things I could do and people I could see and places I could go in the Before Times.
But, I also miss unfamiliar things. I miss travelling and exploring and making new friends (and more than that, I miss looking forward to it). All of this has begun to feel terribly mundane - and as I type that, I know how lucky I am that I have a nice home, a kind spouse, and a steady day job.
I think one of the hardest things for many of us has been the inability to plan ahead. Plans are the same as hope really: both signify that we believe the future will bring something good. But it’s hard to make plans when the future is changing and shifting around us.
There is talk of vaccines beginning rollout before Christmas, and being widely available by next spring, though I can’t say I have much trust in this government’s ability to stick to any sort of timeline (and I’m somewhat worried about the anti-vax movement filtering into the UK). I'm certain that the world will never go back to how it was before, and I can't bring myself to make any solid plans for 2021, but maybe I could start to have hopes for the future - and hope that time will sail us all to land there quickly.
👇 Scroll on down for Things to Read & Things to Eat 👇
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Photo by Jean Carlo Emer from Pexels
Things to read this week
I finally read this interview with Emma Cardarelli, where she talks about how her restaurants reject the particular brand of toxic masculinity, hustle culture and abusive behaviour pervasive in many commercial kitchens. One line that particularly stuck out:
“If you want adults to work for you—adults who are responsible and will stick around, even when they have a family—you want a job to be attractive to them”
UK millennials grew up in a time of change for school meals. Not the kind of change Marcus Rashford is trying to bring about - this wasn’t a question of whether or not we should feed children from low-income backgrounds (a question that shouldn’t need asking at all, and which I can’t believe we are debating today) - this change, led by Jamie Oliver, was about what we should feed our children.
Coming from a middle-class home, with a somewhat ‘crunchy’ mama, I remember (to my shame now) feeling smug that I knew all the vegetables Jamie held up on his TV show and proud of that fact that I had never in my life eaten a turkey twizzler.
Reading this piece in Eater, from one of the students at the school Jamie Oliver, has made me look at my own privilege. I had assumed (in the unthinking way of people who don’t actually have to contend with the issues day-to-day) that Jamie’s campaigning was generally a good thing. I had taken the veneer of ‘feed kids healthier meals’ at face-value.
But, while there was undoubtedly a lot of good resulting from the show and the subsequent campaigning, I had never stopped to think of how it actually affected the people involved: “how exaggeration, individualism, and classism played into the final edit and influenced the national narrative around childhood nutrition and school dinners”. The show portrayed working-class parents as ignorant of the nutritional needs of their children - a narrative which has fuelled many of today’s Tory arguments against extending free school meals. Read Helen Sulis Bowie’s report in Eater here.
Soliel Ho with the lowdown on Bon Appétit’s latest hires after a year of reckoning over the magazine’s “treatment of non-white staff and cuisines”
In body image (maybe not entirely food-related, but also absolutely not not food-related): One of my favourite newsletterers Nicola Slawson, whose Single Supplement I enjoy reading every week despite not being single, wrote this powerful piece on body image, weight and confidence. In the piece, she said succinctly something which I often wrestle with: “I find the body positivity movement so inspiring and yet I just can’t totally apply the same philosophy to myself and my body”. She also directed readers to this mashable piece on a similar topic: What to do when body image is affecting your sex life.
Just some very exciting oreo-related news for my gluten-free pals
Things to eat this week
Lazy pesto-ish sauces: blend any leafy greens & herbs (stalks & all) with olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and a handful of nuts. Add cooked pasta (and maybe some extra veggies, if you have them around) and sit down in front of some mindless TV.
All the mince pies you can get your hands on 🥧
Not to eat, but for fellow Yorkshire folks missing nature during lockdown, LeedsList have compiled ten forest walks to take near Leeds and my dad and I have challenged ourselves to complete them all this winter 🐶
Where to find me this week
I haven't pitched anything this week, so no commissions right now.
As always, you can find me @ZoePickburn on Twiter, Insta, and other social media.
Thanks!
Zoe
Freelance writer & journo | Food blogger & newsletterer (she/her)
Say hello@zoepickburn.com with stories, commissions & foodie chit chat
If you enjoy Nice Pear & want to support it (or any of the other content I create online) you can always become a paying subscriber, buy me a virtual cuppa, or throw some change in the tip jar.