There are few things that can rob me of my appetite: depression, tonsillitis and, perhaps worst of all, heartbreak.
After my first boyfriend left me at 17, eating seemed pointless and futile. My angelic, loving mother pushed plate after plate of home cooking at me, but it all tasted like cardboard. I had already developed an interest in ‘cooking’ (my specialities were toasties, paninis and other types of hot and cold sandwiches), but even melted cheese and sausage didn’t do me any good anymore. I kept losing weight, my face grew gaunt, until one day I decided to go to Korea Foods in New Malden, mainly to get out of bed. As I walked through the aisles, happiness, or something like it, bubbled inside me. The garish packaging! The enormous radishes! PerhapsI thought, I have it in me to prepare something to eat. So I filled my basket with everything I liked and also packed a cotton candy drink for the train ride home.
Back in our kitchen, I sliced king oyster mushrooms thickly and fried them until they had crispy, brown edges. Then I added garlic and a thick lump of butter. I let some rice steam, piled some kimchi on top, and topped the dish with the king mushrooms and all their flavorful juices. As I ate, the butter coating my tongue, I felt content for the first time in two months. The flesh of the mushrooms and the acidity of the kimchi were like a promise that life wasn’t so terrible after all, and there was still so much to enjoy. It wouldn’t be the last time romantic rejection would temporarily render my taste buds useless, but I had learned something important that day, standing there at Korea Foods, studying the 10,000 different soup bases on offer.
In my early twenties, I slept with a man who treated me like dirt for months while I valued him like a £50 note in my wallet. Sometimes, before or after sex, we would go to various Turkish restaurants near our respective homes. One evening, when I felt things were getting serious, we sat down to plates of mezze and he dropped a bombshell: he had slept with another girl who, he told me, he “really liked.” I felt sick – and my appetite disappeared. The lentil soup in front of me, a dish I had been craving all day, now looked like reheated vomit.
I left the food and him and cycled home to complain to my best friend over FaceTime and smoke self-pitying cigarettes one after the other—but then, after a few hours of wallowing, I decided I wasn’t going to pass up a hearty bowl of soup from him on a cold winter’s evening. I stood in the blue light of my fridge, pulled out Italian sausage and wilted basil, a slice of onion and some limp celery, and fried them all with a little garlic, a scent better than that of any man who filled my kitchen. I added a few canned tomatoes, simmered my anti-love potion, and took a shower to wash it off me for good. Then I slipped into my pajamas and ate my dinner cross-legged on the sofa, with a strange sense of superiority. Instead of sharing vomit soup with a bastard who didn’t deserve me, I dined on a bowl of independence.
