The intimacy of feeding people.

Sitting on the wooden breakfast bar at my grandma’s house with gusts of flour patterning my dress. Toddler legs dangling from way up high. Fingers sticky from mixing my own tiny bowl of buttercream. A Da Vinci’esque mural of kitchen equipment. Childhood memories so lucid I can still smell the vanilla that became an olfactive smoke signal alerting me that I was home.

Watching my grandma move around the kitchen as if she was dancing with a lover she knew intimately, was such a joy. The ease at which hands found scales and knuckles found their knead. She was making and baking, cooking and creating for people whose faces I did not know. Birthdays were mixed into anniversaries, and layered onto funerals and weddings. Occasions that asked for expertly decorated cakes and gâteaux, to the ones that required curry chicken and roti. I didn’t always know whose mouths she’d be feeding, but I saw shadows of their hearts in my grandma’s eyes. In this act of making for them and feeding them, it wasn’t information I needed to know, but even from a brain that had not fully developed yet, I knew it was love.

I grew up in a family where tables masqueraded as all-inclusive buffets weighted by food, people and adoration. A table that looked pristine with its starched tablecloths and sparkling dinnerware, yet unruly in its feast-like display of foods that went beyond the confines of any one culture, presentation or crockery that it was served in. Each gathering felt like a test of endurance by its makers. Legs were sore. Fingers aching. Heat pads sleeping under white shirts for wincing backs. Sweat tattooed on upper lips and hairlines. Remarks whispered around the kitchen of “I didn’t think we’d get it all done.” We always did.

Before she retired, my grandma was a pastry chef. She worked in hotels, golf courses and private establishments. She also had a small catering company. My family helped out. Weekends were spent in kitchens making food for celebrations. I saw the labour. Heard the laughs. Then, witnessed the many stages of metamorphosis. The array of ingredients that were whisked, chopped, and blended into dishes. The dishes that were turned into a menu. The menu that became a source of nourishment, sustenance, and pleasure. The emotions that landed on the lips of those who ate it and turned into smiles, eyes animatedly rolling back and the words, oh the words. The words that I can’t remember but knew were filled with so much gratitude. The flowers and applause for my grandma, saying how much it changed their special day, and how much everyone enjoyed it. The love.

My grandma is a sassy, sharp and abundantly loving woman. She has opened her home and kitchen to so many. As she transitions into the later phases of her life, she has forgotten many of her recipes. The rum cakes that she went viral for before TikTok existed. The black forest dessert that my mum and I reminisce about every 3-4 business days. In her mid-eighties she isn’t that enthused by cooking anymore and often says that she’s lost her appetite. Mum and I are her legacy. The story holders. The inherited wisdom keepers. The ones who’ve picked up her apron and wear it gladly.

We watch in glee when we cook new recipes for her, and see her tastebuds become re-enchanted by food again. We grab her apple turnovers from M&S, and watch her giddiness in the ice-cream aisle as she finds new flavours. We bought her some sweets from Tian Tian market and have a video of her trying each one, eyes widening in delight. I am moved by the fact that her legacy for food lives within me. I adore making food for people I love. I get so much satisfaction from setting tables and folding napkins to the whispers of lower back ache that come from spending so much time in the kitchen preparing a meal for people. It is deeply romantic to me.

I enjoy thinking about recipes and taking my time to curate a menu that’s ideal for the moment. The cooking becomes a meditation. The food landing on the table a prayer. I don’t find my joy in creating a speedy meal from what’s left in the fridge. I find it in the meals I’ve prepared where my entire being has found a place to express itself. I find it in the act of feeding people. The act that spells out “care” in non-verbal language.

I’m an official Nara Smith fan. When I watch her “made from scratch” cooking videos that take the word extra to such mountainous heights, I get such a dopamine hit of warmth. She reminds me of my mum, but of course, not to those extremes. While my mum absolutely did not make me Coca Cola or bubblegum from scratch, her mantra was “we have that at home”. Code for, “you know I can make you that and make it better” when we were in supermarkets or strolling past food shops. It wasn’t in a weird “you can’t have nice things” way. We always had lovely things to eat and she started my M&S Food Hall infatuation from an early age. But, simply because she was a damn great cook and homemade meals is her love language. I didn’t have store bought coleslaw, hummus or dips until I was an adult. I didn’t have shop bought birthday cakes until I went to friends’ parties. Colin The Caterpillar… I don’t know him. I was incredibly blessed. So much so, that for one of my primary school birthday parties she made sesame prawn toast from scratch, and you all know that Iceland would have loved to sell us their wildly inauthentic version.

Before people are fed, there is cooking to be done, and my memories of cooking with people are some of the ones I cherish the most. The moments baking bread, trying to figure out how to cut a pain d'epi and knot cardamom buns with my mum. Becky, my platonic life partner, sister and best friend all enveloped in one, makes my soul expand when we cook together. Earlier this year, we were making food for a women’s retreat in California. Two bodies in a kitchen. Music playing. Stories shared. The synchronicity of handing each other things. Making room for each other. The conversations while chopping vegetables. “Wow, taste this”. Mutually feeling the love from the women as they asked us to share the recipes and thanked us for feeding them. Loving them.

Onto the ceremony of plating up. Wanting to give the food the reverence it deserves. The shape of the plate, the surface it will find a temporary resting place on before it’s consumed. The patience of those who’ll receive it. The seats pulled closer to the table. The eyes scanning what’s in front of them. That moment. It lives within me. For me, it’s not about the approval, or praise. It’s the act of love in giving someone the permission to receive one of the basic needs of being human. To be nourished. Fed. Giving that to someone is such a great pleasure. Reminding them that they can rest everything down for a moment and just receive.

As someone who loves offering this gift to people through cooking for them, I feel it so profoundly when I am being fed by someone. I wasn’t raised to not help in the kitchen. I have to get involved. I don’t look for the bathroom when I’m staying at someone’s house, I’m looking for the spice cupboard. My body intuitively gets up to clear plates. I’m not the best at sitting and waiting to receive, let me chop something, man. But, receiving goes along with giving, and when someone cooks for me, it sparks a series of loving fires within me that will never extinguish. I can taste the coriander next to the smile they had while measuring it out. I can taste the black pepper and the compassion that comes with it. I can taste all the ingredients in the food in the same way that I can taste their care.

I’m the kind of woman who finds it entertaining watching hours of restaurant reviews, mukbangs, and “what’s new in the supermarket” videos. Honestly, I know the new coffees that dropped at Sainsbury’s on the week commencing 12th August and I don’t even drink coffee. There’s more food and incredible restaurants available to us than ever before and I wholeheartedly love to participate in all of it. We have Deliveroo for a reason, because it’s quick and convenient, in a sped up existence. We have HelloFresh recipe box delivery services and pre-chopped garlic in the supermarkets, because the time and energy it takes to cook isn’t valued in a world where we prioritise working, and then, getting time back from all of that working.

Yet, cooking food for people we love is an intrinsic part of our humanness. It is precious in its time. It’s precious in how it expresses, “I want to do this for you, let me do this for you”. It’s a healing act of giving to others, but also healing in allowing yourself to “receive” that from others. In our busyness, it forces us to be slow. Slow in our preparation and slow in our eating. If someone invites you over for a meal they’ve cooked, you don’t rush it while you’re on your phone or watching tv, you eat each bite knowing the amount of care that’s been baked into it.

Feeding people is intimate. It’s vulnerable and revealing. All of you is on the plate. We make cooking a skill, and yes, technically it can be one. We expend so much energy focusing on if we think we can cook or not. Or, if we’re good enough or not. We resign ourselves to either saying we can cook or we just can’t, when actually that’s not the important part. Sure, I can throw down in the kitchen, but that’s not where the meaning lies for me. What I would rather say is that I’m a thoughtful cook and anyone can be a thoughtful cook. The thought that goes into the action of preparing a meal with someone with love and the time and diligence to make it as pleasurable and nurturing as possible for them.

That is thoughtfulness.

Cooking for people is sacred to me. It’s a way to connect. It doesn’t have to be a seven course tasting menu with napkins folded into dahlias, it can just be a sandwich in bed after a tough day.