Hello! This week we’re very excited to have saoirse wall writing for the Gazette this week.
saoirse wall (they/them):
hello! i’m saoirse (they/them)
i’m an irish artist in glasgow currently. i am excited to be sharing with you my encounters with food this week ~ expect probiotic dairy and many snacks! i am gluten intolerant so don’t expect gluten. if there is some gluten (there may be) it will be a scandalous indulgence.
Here’s day 1 of a week of food journal by saoirse.
Enjoy,
Sinae and Kate
i wake early and uncomfortable ~ i have been feeling achey and tired the last few days. i try fall back asleep, feel like it won’t happen, then wake again a few hours later, tasty
i’m not hungry. late last night i ate a bunch of potato chunks roasted with chili powder and chaat masala. i spooned big blob of natural yoghurt and then puy lentils on top (precooked from a packet) that i’d dressed in olive oil, salt&pep, apple cider vinegar. as i ate it mixed together into a sort of sweet and warm yoghurty potato soup and i was thrilled with it as an improvised assemblage~
i make a cafetière of coffee and bring it back to bed. i sneeze and it frightens my cat. i read some LA Warman erotica and drink the coffee from one of my favourite cups~ pink with painted cow on it. muicín attacks my hand and i lick the scratch, it’s salty
seamus calls and asks do i want to go for a crodino~
sunday is a day for living deliciously
i crave eating pizza in a bath after seeing janelle monae eating pizza in a bath
on instagram.
i cut an orange into segments and snack them while standing. i think of cilla black rubbing oxo cubes on orange slices and decide to try sprinkling mine with some flaky sea salt from Achill Island. i take a live-reaction video trying both normal and smokey varieties.
so the normal one Achill Island sea salt
on the orange makes it taste like
really sweet
like
sweeter than an orange slice without the salt
mmm
emm chill island smokey sea salt is
mm~mmmm!
an explosion of flavour,
more muted than the plain salt i think
delicious, all in all!
i smooth some olive oil through my hair before leaving the house. the other morning after sleeping elsewhere i did the same and only realised once the deed was done that the oil was infused with garlic. i was in a hurry to go to a meeting in which i sat smelling so so garlic
this walk down viccy road today smells of bread, then tomato sauce, cigarette, something salty,
i crave an oyster,, last monday hungover i tried to go for one single oyster with rfj but the place was shut
i lost my smell with covid when i first had it this time last year and i was distraught. i’m having strong sense memory of that time this last week while feeling under the weather and remembering feeling so tired and so alone in this lil flat and feeling so strange not being able to smell my own body or the piss etc that came out of it
crodino is a non-alcoholic bitter aperitif that seamus and i tried for the first time the other week in a café round the corner and decided it will be our Summer Drink. today again we sit at a table outside in the sun and have one each. it feels a bit like having a campari spritz and i can see it scratching the itch for a sunny bev when i don’t feel like drinking alcohol~ and for that i am grateful!!! it’s also £2.40 for a tiny lil bottle too and because of this feels like a special precious treat to drink slowly and savour
i pop into seamus’s afterwards to say hi to martini the cat. the stairwell smells of mustard oil. the flat smells of corn. the smell of corn reminds me so much of visiting my aunt helen in oakland when i was 12 and i tried quesadillas for the first time and ate my only ever tamale (i would love to eat another tamale someday). her house smelled like corn mixed with something warm and woody and she still smells like that i always think, even though she doesn’t live in that wood-slate house anymore and doesn’t eat corn every day i don’t think.
en route home i pop into some shops and buy among other things: puffed corn peanut snacks for nora because i think i will see nora later (these are their favourites); stuffed vine leaves (and i look forward to slurping their viscous goo); a loaf of ‘fancy’ gluten free bread that is on offer; bottle o milk kefir; a spanish cheese that looks like a boob.
nora calls on me to come outside. i need to eat something quick so arrange a cold version of last night’s potato yoghurt lentil thing to see how that works ~ it is just as delicious cold!! i will be reassembling this in future. i also eat a spoon of coleslaw, a few slices of boob cheese (tastes like babybel imo), and drink a cup of cold cafetière coffee left from earlier.
we go to the park to eat peanut snacks and sunflower seeds and drink a beer
i have such a fondness for sunflower seeds in their shell, or pipas as i knew them when i first had them as teenager visiting family in spain. i loved and still love how the scattering of seeds is a mark of people having gathered in that spot~
i never tried these peanut snacks before meeting nora. they are like the texture of a cheeto or chickatee corn snack but as they dissolve in your mouth they become sort of like very very smooth peanut butter
after park i come home and plan to make meera sodha’s pea and aubergine curry ~ a recipe i love that has become a saoirse staple. but am distracted by a seagull that has all day been swooping at and crashing into my bedroom window where my kitten likes to sit. it’s really very dramatic and i worry that both parties are getting overly stressed so i eventually shut muicín out of the room.
i feed myself a tin of mackerel in tomato sauce mushed onto a slice of bread with flaky salt and pepper on top. for afters i have a good few gulps of milk kefir, yum.