Tues 10th JanI was working on an application until late last night, fuelled by fireweed chai given to me by my friend Sandra when I visited Estonia, so I wake up later than usual. Rather than rushing to the kitchen for breakfast I stay in my room to extend the fast with the plug-in radiator and a long, slow yoga routine. I read my book for half an hour and put a few jumpers on to protect from the old unheated school chill before eventually heading down. For the first year of being here, I regularly planned meals the night before. Either I was structuring my day around food because I felt it was scarce, or I was holding on to some semblance of control in a chaotic space. Whichever it was, I have relaxed and reverted to scavenging in the communal pantry or my ferment shelf, which illustrates I spend less time worrying about food and more collaging something together from the wealth of intentional ingredients I have spent months finding, making or preserving. I have a large slab of my first attempt at a focaccia left over from the weekend. It did not rise and so is fairly solid – it needs to be laterally halved and furiously griddled in the toastie press to finish the job. Why didn’t it work? Inactive yeast? Too cold to prove? Faulty oven? Nowt lost, I will try again this week. The tomatoes, marinated peppers and chopped garlic embedded in the top sizzle as they touch the hot metal. Then I reuse a pan my housemate just finished with, spoon in some szechuan pepper oil and crack an egg directly on top. Next to it I add about ten okra, de-stemmed and dissected, and a pinch of my onion skin salt. While everything is cooking, I make a black yorkshire tea with the local honey and a pipette of herbal tincture from Remedy Workshop in Glasgow. My bread is done so on goes some szechuan oil, a layer of plain sauerkraut, the okra, fried egg, scraps of grated cheese left on the chopping board and a swizz of sriracha, stacked. It’s so dense I can only manage half, plus a couple of bites of that potato salad.
Later, I unpeel the orange I brought to my studio and eat the huge segments slowly while listening to Farmerama’s new podcast, and follow with a small pack of parma violets that I randomly found when tidying the cinema. The remaining half of the focaccia sandwich gets eaten for an early dinner and I think about clearing out my fridge by finishing up odds and sods so the new residents can have a whole shelf. Off the top of my head I know there is at least a snack later:
And toppings for porridge tomorrow:
Sean Roy Parker is a visual artist, fermentation enthusiast and community gardener based in Derbyshire, England. He writes on fermentalhealth.substack.com and posts as @fermental_health on instagram.
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