Writing About Food

Our writing workshop met this morning and I suggested we do a writing exercise before getting on with our critiquing. I chose an exercise from one of my favourite and well-used books, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. She recommends a short session (we did five minutes) of brainstorm/freeflow writing followed by a further session to edit some or all of the material produced and then to share the pieces out loud. 

I had chosen food for our writing exercise, anything to do with food. I guessed that each of us would produce something totally different and I was right. We heard about the bulk cooking of pizzas for a family gathering and the way that food can touch the memory like no other sensation can. We were taken into a French kitchen with its rich atmosphere and pungent aromas. We mused at the way in which a trip to the market to buy cherries turned into memories of an aunt and her hat-purchasing fetish and we had a mouthwatering account of all the foods that we have, over the years, brought along to our monthly lunch gatherings. (Yes, we are ladies who lunch as well as ladies who write!)

Although most of us are fiction writers, every piece of writing was based on true events, most of them long-ago memories. This was also true of the piece I'd written, except it isn't a long ago memory. It happened yesterday. I wrote it in short poetry-style lines. It's not meant to read as a poem. It was just the way it fell from my pen:

I love cheese,

creamy yellow cheese, 

crunchy mature cheese, 

soft runny French cheese, 

the kind that stinks out your fridge,

cheese wrapped in nettle leaves,

even blue-veined cheese,

but yesterday I wanted cheese scones for lunch.

We called at the bakers.

They only had cheese straws.

We popped into the deli

But baclava doesn't do it for me.

We had soup for lunch instead

and I disappeared off to write,

trying to ignore the noises from the kitchen.

Clunk, whir, click.

Teatime.

He brought me a steaming mug of tea 

and a plate of tiny, round,

perfectly formed,

cheese scones.

They dissolved on my tongue.

From a man of few words 

They spoke a million.

Only one left. Proof of the pudding...