This week I have been researching, pricing up, budgeting, and wishing I lived in a country that appreciated and paid artists properly so that my life could be that little bit easier. As I don’t, and as my finances, job searching, and future funding applications don’t make the most appealing subject to write or read about, I thought instead we could return to my kitchen. I wrote a last week about starting the journey of building my kitchen, and of the joy it gave me.
I’ve been continuing to ponder that joy over the last week. One of the things I am most excited about when I finally get to travel in the van is food: the discovery of new foods, the buying and cooking of ingredients from markets around the world, the journey of meaning and discovery found in regional recipes. Even the idea makes me smile and my heart flutter. I am not a chef, but as paid subscribers will have discovered, I like inventing, adapting, and personalising recipes. Because of this I know the foods I discover in my future van travels will lead to endless hours of fun.
But for me, cooking is more than simply having fun, it is a language of identity. One of the letters I read on Substack is The Jewish Table, a beautiful newsletter from an American Jewish food writer. As I mentioned in one of my recent Photos from the Archives, my grandmother is Hungarian Jewish and a Holocaust Survivor. To me, being Jewish appears to mean two things, being of the Jewish faith and/or being of Jewish decent, not religiously but genetically. My grandmother isn’t religious, but she is Jewish, and so in part, am I. However, what that means isn’t always clear to me.
Reading The Jewish Table has been an eye opening, educational and emotional experience. Food has become a way into deepening my understanding of my family history and its connection to a wider culture. That is the power of food. The UN has a list called Intangible Cultural Heritage. On it they include what they call ‘good safeguarding practises’ for everything listed, from fire to festival, rituals to food. Earlier this year the UN added Ukrainian Borscht to the list, labelling it a case of extreme urgency. Its addition is a way of trying to protect not a just a recipe, but the cultural community and heritage that comes with it from the ravages of war.
The inclusion of food on UNs list shows that my desire to use food to reconnect with my heritage, with nature, and with place, isn’t unique to me, but rather it is fundamental to humanity. After all, we’ve broken bread together and shared stories around the fire since we could bake bread and build a fire.
I don’t know what I will discover, what recipes I might find or create, what I might learn about myself, but I know that there is power in food, in the ingredients, in its meaning. We eat certain foods with ceremonies and rituals, we share family recipes passing them on from one generation to another, we discover our shared global history through similarities in national dishes.
The fun I am dreaming of in my van kitchen is a way of extending, expanding, and broadening my own journey, my own understanding, my own experience of the world. It is a way of continuing and building traditions. My van kitchen is as much about making space for my own personal journey as it is about making space for fun and sustenance. That journey begins with building, which will continue tomorrow. I look forward to sharing more with you all next week.
In the meantime, I thought I would share my print shop once more. Many of my photos are available, all with a variety of sizes to choose from. They can be ordered direct to your door or the door of a loved one. Simply use the drop down menu in the top right to choose a category and browse from there. If you don’t see a size you want, or a photo you particularly love, let me know as that is easily fixed.