Tomato and Basil

Sometimes when you are an adult, there comes a time when grief makes its way into your body from your mind. It coils into your chest and drops down an anchor into your heart. And it doesn't stop there; it rearranges the hands, the legs and the whole being to run on autopilot. 

But patience, I am coming to the point.
Before I do so, I must digress a little more. 

It's not just grief, but stress that manifests as anxiety, pressure that becomes tension and helplessness that turns into hopelessness, all to become a weight you cannot shake off. It’s in these times that your mind revolts against your own body and declares a decree, saying ‘thou shalt not be hungry!' 

I mean, fair, considering that you’ve taken all this and prepared your body to exist in fight or flight, even if this isn’t a battle you can win with your fists. 

The actual story begins here, though, in hunger. 

When you are at your lowest, like a weight is trying its hardest to pull you to the bottom, you don’t want to eat. Food becomes an afterthought, a thing you can put off until starvation kicks in or someone you love kicks your butt. I’ve been there, and done that to glory. 

I have woken up not hungry. Went to office and sat at a lunch table not hungry. I’ve driven back home and gone to bed not hungry. And sad to say, I had it perfected down to an art. A routine like this is unusual, especially for someone like me, who loves food. Who enjoys the flavour and sinks into it with gusto. Its down right blasphemy to eat simply for sustenance when food brings so much to the table. 

But there is a silver lining to this sad state of affairs. 

If ever you find yourself in this peril, heed my advice, young master. Put on your shoes, hitch up your satchel and march down to the market. Pick the ripest tomatoes and the greenest basil you can find, for in this produce lies the solution that shall break you out of this spell. 

Now, it's time to roll up your sleeves and get to work. Put a pot of water on fire, make a cross at the bottom of the tomatoes and in they go into the pot. Give them ten minutes and take them out into an ice bath and peel the skins right off. Take another pan, add a generous amount of olive oil, smash up a few cloves of garlic and let them sizzle until soft. Take all the unfeelingness and use that to squish the tomatoes one by one into this aromatic indulgence and take a moment. 

Take a moment to truly get in there and smell the lovely fragrance of tomato meets olive oil coloured in notes of garlic and let it simmer. 

Give it time, let it come together, let it bubble, huddle and thicken. And now, if the lovely flavours that have surrounded you have not yet persuaded your stomach to growl, here is one final trick. Pick up your basil and give it a really good whiff. There’s a rich, verdant and slightly spicy aroma that hits you and somehow convinces you that you need to eat. 

I say this with great conviction, backed by a tried-and-tested methodology that tomato and basil made into a simple marinara can bring hunger back. I am no scientist to understand the science behind it, nor do I have the interest. What I am interested in, is to encourage the ones like me to take a bite and find your way to hunger again. 

I have sat stubbornly in restaurants, surrounded by hordes of friends who have tried their best to offer me a bite. I have had my partner sit at the other end of the table and convince me that I need to try and eat. Nothing worked, and maybe the guilt made me pick up a spoon and shovel in some food, but true hunger evaded me until I made a simple marinara. 

Sometimes, when you are an adult, life is unnecessarily complicated. Either you do it to yourself or someone else will gladly do it for you, and the secret to surviving it is quite simple. Be hungry. 

Hungry to do things that give you joy, not the supposed things that you wish gave it to you. Hungry to create something, put your name on it and be proud of it regardless of the outcome. Hungry to try and be better, to truly try and beat the demons in your head back with a stick and say NO! 

Hungry to eat. And eat with gusto. 

After all this rambling, I leave you with one tiny truth, my friends. 

If you are not hungry, look within; it's a system malfunction.
And if you cannot fix it immediately, find some tomatoes and basil,
they’ll tide you over until you can.