'Nowadays, I dress more like a potato than a rainbow'
A tale of vegetables and siloed thinking
Note: If you think you may have already read this - this is a reinterpreted piece, please keep reading!
Growing up, life echoed the beige of food at home; paler than it should be, of mince, slightly over-boiled cauliflower sapped of life, pastel broccoli, even emaciated carrot! Can food be hetereonormative, is meat and two veg straight as hell? What about a pie?
Why is queer more colourful than beige?
Vegetables were always secondary or tertiary; I never revelled in them, talked about them, fetishised them or took photos. Nowadays, I take more pictures of sexy veg than the people I love; more fruit than selfies!
I cherish memories of being tiny whilst sitting at my grandparents' formica-topped wooden table, my legs swinging from a tall stool, helping to top and tail broad beans. More memorable however was the way they used to bake together, my grandfather weighing out the ingredients for my grandmother to bake with, a division of labour which felt appealing, an act which felt equitable and less traditional than maybe expected. Due to my grandmother’s rheumatoid arthritis, my grandfather also used to plait my aunt’s hair before school.
As a child, my personality was far from beige. I loved colour, and I could also be quite loud. Hands on my hips as a toddler. Street rap atop a car as a pre-teen. I was enamoured by a bright cartoon-patterned jacket my mum bought me and excited to grow into it. But moving from England to Scotland may have dulled me. I was too much and no one had ever told me so up until this point. My Scottish peers didn't like the jacket and didn't much appreciate my northern tones.
As a young student, I could feed myself, compile a decent pasta dish, and coax a roux into a respectable béchamel sauce (also beige!). I fared well on a small budget in my Hillhead Street student flat, carefully allocating around £8ish-a-week as a food allowance so I could prioritise more 'essential' expenditures—vodka and Red Bull, £1 beers at the student union (Stella mostly; I didn't like Tennants), and shiny, studded wide-legged Diesel jeans.
I adored my button-up hooded terry-toweling shirt. I was into clothes but vegetables didn't register. I have no memories of buying vegetables other than potatoes and onions at the supermarket. I knew that Roots, Fruits and Flowers on Great Western Road was an admirable institution, but I don't remember ever going; I never selected things by weight or coveted things grown in soil for their beauty. Never chucked a pile of stuff in the oven to roast and reuse another day. I also didn’t really curate the people I slept with in the way that we do nowadays. Or if I did, I did it unwittingly. I once took a guy home from the student union because he was impressed that I could pronounce Baltimore, Maryland correctly. This was long before The Wire was made or capitulated to fame in the UK. I cooked him and a friend potatoes with other items I can’t recall. He was a little late. We watched Heat and he joked with friends about teabagging. Later in life, he became a chef.
In the late 90’s I baulked at the phrase lipstick lesbian. Detested the trend of kissing other women to turn guys on and absolutely refused to engage in this act. I didn’t seek to explore my crush on another exchange student friend who was openly and confidently bisexual. She taught me which red wines I should select for good value and taste. Looking back, I can’t remember what she looked like at all, but her spirit perseveres.
As I grew older, I became more aware of the spectrum of possibilities. Beauty. Pleasure. Taste. Eventually, I got an organic veg box. Later still, something shifted. Could loving vegetables serve as a queer allegory?
Learning about soil; the diversity of species, the non-binary nature of the natural world opened up an understanding that I had been encapsulated by siloed thinking. I realised that familiarity with one experience shouldn’t limit my capacity to embrace other experiences or realities. It taught me what it was to be human, and led me to start thinking about the more than human. I started seeking out colour, anthocyanins— pigments that paint the natural world in deep purples and blue, craving vibrancy on my plate as much as in my wardrobe or on my walls at home. Studying food helped me understand systems and cultures of oppressions I hadn’t understood before. Exploring food brought me into spaces that were more experimental, spaces that were held, for all of us.
Conversations allowed for open expression, vulnerability and tenderness but with plenty of room for playfulness or to still be silly. It was clear to me that once I realised relationships could be bonds that did not limit freedom, I could live and love quite happily in that way.
Nowadays, I dress more like a potato than a rainbow1. I have weird feelings about potlucks. I guess it depends who you ask, but I don’t view myself as queer-coded.
Sometimes people assume I’m vegan or vegetarian because of my politics or identity. I’m not. I currently can’t bring myself use the term ‘dyke’ and have also cringed at being described as ‘solo-poly’2.
I am often simultaneously too much but often not enough.
A complex adaptive system.
Human…Sometimes isolated but not siloed.
The above is an adaption of a short piece I wrote for in response to the question: ‘What would you cook for your younger self?’
Most of them I have never met in person but I often seek out their work, catching up with their newsletters as a remedy for loneliness, exchanging words in passing, pinning their illustrations on my fridge, dropping a heart emoji underneath an Instagram post or elsewhere. I gave them no restrictions – no format, no word-count, no age range; I told them they didn't have to cook, they could refuse to cook themselves something – because I wanted these entries to be plural, human, rather than curated. Eleven of them answered – Alycia, Apoorva, Clare, Devin, Hannah, Isabela, Nina, Reena, Sarah, Stefanie, Steph – and I am so grateful they allowed me to share their emails with you today. What follows are après-ski, exorcism and cookbook talks, as well as memories of wide-legged jeans and tree spinach, thoughts on carbs and noodles, booze and beans, some recipes and much more.
Your story is valid.
Right after I’d written it, I was wondering why I had written a bit of a queer allegory without explicitly incorporating any queerness, so I set about tweaking it, though it has been languishing in my drafts folder for a while due to my illness.
You can read the full piece and associated recipes here:
I’m currently recovering from surgery so not sure when I will next post here, but I will…be back.
In the meantime, here’s a wonderful piece by
that describes some of the feelings of experiencing pain and the loss of control over our lives in moments like this. My plan is to try to start to spreadsheet plan my way out of my own spiral of despair, once I’m ready:
And here’s a picture of a rainbow I took when driving back from a recent hospital appointment:
Mostly grey but with beige skin and energy levels, a little lumpy and more rotund than usual (due to continued abdominal swelling)
I prefer ‘single’ as a descriptor! With regards to my feelings of adapting the word ‘dyke’ (as bi/pansexual) as with all things, this may change! My diet is flexible - I eat mostly vegetarian at home, and when I’m out and about this often depends on whom I’m with. I also realise this is a little contradictory because it would be easier for me to source higher welfare meat or fish at home, rather than when eating out.
Loved these reflections. <3 & ty for the shout-out, I'm sending you healing energy.