Coming home from his 6am sandwich-making shift at the bakery, Jack brings mushrooms, avocados and eggs for breakfast. Mushrooms sliced, big and full, fried in a pan with butter, garlic and oregano. On toast with avo and fried eggs. The eggs I make look like hotel eggs - suspiciously round with a shiny yolk and glossy white. The sort of eggs served up at your complimentary breakfast at your country hotel stay. I keep dreaming about food - last night a bowl of truffle pasta was perched on top of a tree.
At the bakery, all the sandwiches have already sold out. I think about the various other shops this bakery has across the city - each with their individual dawn sandwich makers. I have a mini apple pastry, and a coffee from the machine. We sit outside and my bones feel warm for the first time in a while. The sunlight hits the buildings in a way that makes it seem like the sun is just about to go down, all throughout the day. It makes me relish its heat even more.
I go to the supermarket after taking a very long detour home, and come across the smallest carton of tomato puree ever. I also spent an extraordinary amount of time scouring the shelves for capers, to no avail. I’ve decided to take advantage of having dinner alone tonight to make puttanesca (minus capers). Buy a huge tub of cherry tomatoes. Courgettes are expensive here.
Lunch
Celebrating 3 consecutive days of sun with caprese salad. The basil leaves with a squeeze of life left in them are used, the rest of the sad wilting plant pot victim to my negligence. I have the last big orange, peeled instead of quartered this time. It’s a less fun way to eat it, but less messy. Put ice cubes in my water, sunglasses still on my head. Wishing we had a bath tub, I miss eating oranges in the bath. It feels strange eating lunch without flicking through a cookbook from my shelves - left behind in Glasgow as I prioritised raincoats and plates.
Dinner
Sleepily make pasta puttanesca. I’ve spent years trying to finesse this recipe. My love for puttanesca started with my dad making it on Friday nights for him and my mum while me and my brother were in our beds. It become a fascinating secret, an adult dish that the kids weren’t allowed to know about. I felt like I had been let into a cult when I was one day allowed to sample this salty, briny pasta. Aromas of anchovies fill the kitchen, a plate with parmesan, parsley and capers waiting on the dinner table to be added at the end. It’s never enough parmesan, we always have to grate more. My recipe is very similar to my dad’s, though I like to add a bit of lime for a hint of sweetness - an addition introduced by a uni friend who also had a love for puttanesca. Anchovies here are slimy, dissolving into sea water the second they hit the pan. Our kitchen smells like the ocean, it’s the first time I’ve really felt like I was close to the sea in this harbour town with it’s scent-less, tide-less sea.
Washed down with a glass of rum and orange juice - a questionable choice I know but I had to prepare for the night of socialising somehow. A side portion of power ballads too.
Ruby Eleftheriotis is a curator and writer, with one foot in Scotland and the other in Norway. You can find her on instagram here.
To get a better understanding of Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine, have a look at this list of resources, compiled by Marta Bohdanna Iwanek.