19th Sept (Monday)

by Emily Read

Good morning! This week we’re really looking forward to having Emily Read sharing with us. Emily (she/her) has just moved back home to the UK from Paris after being a nanny for a year. Whilst she's not applying for jobs, she busies herself by writing, helping her mum out in the kitchen, and bothering her younger brother Benjamin, who has lymphoma. She tries to help him out a bit too. 

Find Emily on instagram @em1lyread.

We hope you enjoy,

Kate + Sinae

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19th Sept (Monday)

9:05 am

I eat breakfast with my parents. Mum has two plums whilst flicking through the royal marsden cancer cookbook. Dad has a banana and a pear, glued to ‘fleet tv’, the youtube channel of his beloved Ebbsfleet United. I have a sad looking nectarine, the last one I’ll probably have until summer rolls around again next year. I don’t usually eat breakfast, but I need to eat as I have to take a tablet 3 times a day with meals. My wisdom tooth is being evil. Benji isn’t up yet - he had chemo a few days ago so is sleeping longer than he usually does. I imagine he’ll have a smoothie when he eventually stumbles downstairs. He’ll be keen to show his prowess as smoothie king to his girlfriend, Charlie, who’s here for a couple of days.

‘Fuck me, that’s an organisational nightmare!’ mum exclaims - she’s now moved from the cookbook to the funeral. Dad is refusing to watch. I give Henry, the dog, his breakfast, which I will not go on to describe as it is far too lavish for a dog and will embarrass me greatly. I have to encourage him to eat it, as he’s busy guarding his new toy squirrel we got him for his birthday. I think he thinks it’s his baby. 

Benji surfaces just before we leave for the day, blasting the national anthem from his phone in an ironic tribute to her late maj. He seems in good spirits. Mum and Dad stress about leaving him, they tell him everything there is in the house to eat and then say about 3 times to ring if there are any problems.

12:15pm

We eat lunch in the Pop up Cafe in Deal, where I have the nicest hot drink and the nicest salad I’ve ever consumed. Hot drink: chocolate chai, a slight variation on hot chocolate, which I love as I am a big baby with a massive sweet tooth. It comes decorated with little edible flowers on top, which get in my mouth when I take a sip, but don’t bother me since they’re so pretty. The salad is falafel and halloumi, and contains almost no leaves of any sort, but has lots of pickled elements to it and a big blob of hummus on the side. I make a mental note to consume much, much more halloumi, as it is, despite being basic, one of life’s greatest joys.

2:50pm

Mum breaks out a supply of chocolate I didn’t know existed. I wonder if she is hiding any other treats from us. I eat two lindt on a full stomach and feel sick. Worth it.

5:30pm

Late piece of my red velvet cake that I made yesterday. Taste wise, if I may say so myself, it’s delicious, but structurally it’s an utter failure. It looks like a child smashed it in anger (see image below). I should’ve lined the base of the cake tins. It looks a bit like a crater on Mars. So ugly.

8:00pm

Fajitas for dinner! 3 words that send me and Benji into childish hysteria. Fajitas, apart from being an incredible Monday night tea, are also great for the tastebuds of someone with cancer. Chemo has meant that Benji is no longer as sensitive to taste as he would otherwise be, so strong flavours like citrus and spice are integral to making eating more enjoyable. Chemo also leaves a metallic, iron-like taste in the mouth, so once again, strong flavours are very useful at mealtimes. 

This is all incredibly disorientating and irritating for Benji, who loves eating, however it has led to some unhinged and entertaining food habits developing that we can all enjoy. My favourite is watching him munching on lemon wedges without batting an eyelid, whilst we all wince at him from our places at the dinner table. He’ll occasionally look up and frown, as if to say ‘Why are you all staring at me?’, and then promptly go back to stripping all the flesh from the skins. Mum’s pet peeve is watching him douse everything in salt. As a woman who struggles relinquishing control when it comes to family eating habits, this is especially frustrating, as she cannot stop him in his salty frenzy. I enjoy watching the taste warp, as it’s one of the side effects that’s less sinister than the rest. It’s like he’s gained a strange kind of superpower. Lemon boy.