Widowhood continues to present surprises, the most unexpected being that I am not, after all, happy to live on cheese and biscuits for ever.
It’s peculiar. You spend years wishing you didn’t have to cook every night, wondering why everyone can’t just forage in the fridge once in a while, then life dumps you on your own and after a few months of exhausted, deliberate not-cooking you find yourself thinking: actually, I really fancy something homemade.
Mushroom and Bacon Risotto
Serves 1
Ingredients
some mushroom
some bacon
10 tons of cheese
Method
as heavy and sticky as quick-drying cement.
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freeze massive portions and binge on them for seven nights.
When you live alone for the very first time, the issues that you assume will be primary, the spiritual loneliness, or the insecurity of being the only one at home at night, become strangely less important than decisions surrounding food. In a literal sense, how to fill the emptiness?
Hard logic taunts you. Why bother cooking anything, if it’s just for you? Even Delia Smith’s 1985 cookbook One is Fun! had a smirky exclamation mark. Food for yourself isn’t about love; it’s survival. So don’t waste time, just grab some protein and shove it between slices of bread.
Food, towards the end of my husband’s life, when I was preparing three meals a day for him, was regretfully more about survival. I had a siege mentality. Like a doomsday prepper I built up three freezers rammed with easy solutions, ready meals, a cupboard sagging with tins of Scotch broth.
How could you do this to me? I asked him after he died. You know I hate Scotch broth. Full of sheep’s eyes. When my brain allowed, I gave away the meals I’d never eat. Then, after I could no longer face even Peter’s Yard crackers and the best cheddar, and the risotto was a fading memory, I had a brilliant idea for an austere but creative challenge.
How long could I live on what remained in the cupboards and freezers? How long could I delay the next supermarket delivery? About three months, actually. After 10 weeks, I calculate there are still 15 meals in the freezer, as long as I’m inventive with the year-old salmon fillets and the butter beans.
A medal-worthy result, frankly, though when you don’t have to cater for anyone else’s tastes, and the butter, onions, potatoes, bread, salt and tomatoes ran out weeks ago, things get a bit weird… which is why last week I have found myself eating nduja and fish fingers. Never mind, it’ll soon be over.
I should explain that my cooking is physically limited: my hands are damaged; nipping to the shops on a whim isn’t possible. A few years ago I toyed with writing The Tetraplegic’s Cookbook, but realised that after the 15 recipes you can make with a bag of frozen chopped onions, a bag of frozen peppers and a tin of tomatoes, I’d struggle.
Maybe these games are simple evasion. Unavoidably now I have time to focus purely on looking after myself – but self-care through diet is foreign territory. Cooking for one should be self-love, but my relationship with food, like countless other people’s, is complicated. Self-neglect, usually involving sugar, is my default.
Alpine Eggs
Serves 1
Ingredients
some free-range eggs
copious cheese
Method
basically eggs and copious cheese.
Photograph by Kate Whitaker for The Observer