The title for this one came to me a couple of days ago, on the train on the way back from a literary convention. I thought, “Brilliant! Who can resist a blog post about food?”
The only problem is… I don’t have much to say about food. My creative process often happens that way: I get a flash of inspiration, then as soon as I sit down and start writing, the magic’s gone. So I’ve sat myself down with my laptop and a homemade chocolate muffin (okay, to be honest, the muffin’s already gone and I’m only a few sentences in) and… I’m going to try to write about food.
So.
Food.
What can I say about food?
I have nothing to say about food!!!
Julia Child would be ashamed of me. I read her autobiography recently and I highly doubt she’d have ever run out of things to say about food. By all accounts, the final version of her (enormous) debut cookbook, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, was only a fraction of what she wanted to publish. I don’t have a copy of Mastering, but I’m told it’s a veritable Neanderthal of a book, an encyclopaedia of French cooking. I watched Julie & Julia a couple of years ago, and I wish Julie Powell’s blog posts (documenting her journey as she cooked her way through the whole book) were still accessible. I might have some inspiration then.
…That’s all I can think of to say about food. The TV has just shown me an advert for Masterchef Australia – am I supposed to take inspiration from that? I don’t watch Masterchef UK, let alone Masterchef Australia.
Let’s talk about cake! Cake is one of life’s greatest pleasures. It’s vegetarian, so I don’t feel terrible about eating it. It’s moist, it’s soft, and it’s sweet. (Please note I am talking about sponge cake here. Not meat cake, which is an utter abomination that probably needs its own blog post one day.) Remember that trend from a couple of years ago, where you thought it was a cardboard box or something but in fact it was cake? That would be my DREAM. I don’t understand why people got so upset over it. You thought it was a boring thing, but it was a delicious sweet thing. What’s the problem? Let them eat cake, that’s what I say! (Not in the context of the actual quotation from Marie Antoinette, which I just looked up and which made me quite sad.)
The other day I had a craving for cake. But not a shop-bought one. No, my brain had to make life difficult for me, and crave these really specific homemade chocolate muffins that I hadn’t had in quite a while. But by the time I finally got around to making them, the craving had gone. No matter – I still got cake out of it!
So, to conclude… if you are looking for a sign to eat cake today, this is it.
You’re welcome.