Hello! Hope all is well, and welcome to any new subscribers. (Thanks Hattie for recommending us the other day). This week we have Eleni sharing writing on food with us on the Fortified Gazette. Eleni Wittbrodt (she/her) is a German visual artist based in Glasgow. Find her on instagram @wttbrdt . We’re both looking forward to this,
Best, Kate + Sinae
Hi all, this week’s gazette will be dispatched from Paris, where I’m in residence at the Cité internationale des arts until the end of the year. I’ve only arrived a few weeks ago, and getting to know my new everyday life in this place naturally revolves around eating; socially, economically and sensorially.
Curiously, the tongue does not only help to absorb matter, it’s also the muscle that articulates our speech. I’ve been told I speak English with a German accent but French with an English accent – a result of four years of Fish and Chips?
There’s nothing special planned for this week, and I’ll simply take you along and document what happens on my plate and palate. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy!
9:10
The kitchen greets me with a tray of used glasses from last night’s gathering. The room is tiny, so they take up all the counter space. I run a hot hot soapy bath for them in the sink and clonk them into the water one by one.
Coffee! I grind 12g of beans and brew them in an Aeropress. The beans grew in Kenya and have a sharp sour smell – it’s sometimes a bit much on an empty stomach but today I think the tanginess of it could be quite nice. I send a magnesium tablet ahead to say good morning. I’m not hungry but grab a few galettes to nibble on, small thin butter biscuits. Inside the cardboard box they are packed into small cellophane parcels in piles of 5. A really good number for one portion. Balancing the pack of biscuits and my steaming cup of coffee on top of a book I walk down two floors to the backyard of the building and sit down on a picnic bench for my morning reading sesh.
It’s a choreography of the coffee, the biscuits, and the 8 page essay. The biscuits are good, simple but elegant and shaped in rounds with scalloped edges. Whilst I’m reading the text, the coffee and the biscuits slowly travel from outside to inside too, and I’m hoping all three will be finished at the same time. But I’m too distracted, people walk past my bench, it’s a busy morning, I say a few Bonjours, check my phone. I do finish the coffee and biscuits but not the text.
When I go back upstairs and into the kitchen I’m surprised to find the soapy water in the sink is still warm. While I wash the glasses I think of the persons who drank from them and try to recall all their names.
I get really hungry, almost dizzy, at 11:55. My fridge suggest half a net melon to me, which I think is an excellent idea. I cut the orange flesh into bite-sized pieces and eat them at the desk while I type this. The fruit is slightly frozen – this is not supposed to happen in the fridge but I like it – think melon sorbet ice confect. I google what a melon plant looks like: It’s a climbing herb, like a cucumber or pumpkin, and on the photos I see that the proportion of leafy bits to fruit is grotesque.
Still feeling hungry so a Kinder choc bar from the fridge follows.
15:38
A bit of an unusual time for a hot meal but I’m hungry. I heat up a portion of the big batch of bean stew that I cooked a couple of days ago and have some baguette with it that I just bought. It’s still warm.
Bean compositions are my new thing, probably because it’s been very hot and beans are so good as a cold salad with fresh veg or even fruit or just with oil and salt. There’s also something weirdly nice about that extra prep step the night before when you have to soak the dry beans. It’s a bit silly, but since I’m cooking almost exclusively for myself at the moment, those tiny extra efforts feel like I’m doing myself a nice little favour.
Anyway, this week we’ve had a few big thunderstorms and it got cooler, so I guess I’ve tapped into autumn cooking just for a moment. Went for a slow cooked stew of beans with thick chunks of bacon like my grandma used to put into soups, and whole tomatoes. I co-freestyled this recipe together with a friend over text message, Berlin – Paris, as we were both craving something similar. She cooked a proper sugo to go with the beans though while I took a shortcut and just popped in some whole toms to slowly simmer away and fall apart. I’m very pleased with it, the light sauce is just bang on umami. I get myself a second round of the stew + baguette and notice that a bottle of sparkling water found its way into my kitchen, probably with yesterday’s glasses. I normally don’t buy it myself but it’s nice to have now so I pour myself a glass of that to go with my food. Dessert is a handful (+ refill) of goldbears from the fridge.
17:05
A spontaneous online meeting catches me right when I’m starting to doze away for a nap. I decide I can pull myself together and get up to make another Aeropress, this time with an Ethiopian coffee that is sweet and velvety. I store my last Kinder bar on the desk too, knowing I’ll eat it as soon as the meeting starts. Just got enough time left to play this week's ear worm, "I Got The…” by Labi Siffre. Are they drinking altar wine on the cover?
19:25
THIRSTY! Pint of water.
19:47
Slightly peckish. A small bowl of riffled potato crisps. A refill. Oh and another magnesium tablet before I forget it! I refill my water filter jug so it’s ready to go for tomorrow morning’s coffee.
22:40
Last bit of baguette. Too much baguette.
A great insight into what you’re doing and eating. Looking forward to more. X