Hello!
This week we’re excited to have Caitlin Merrett King here on the gazette, sharing a daily food diary. Caitlin is a programmer and writer based in Glasgow. (@caitlinmerrettking)
Bon appétit,
Kate and Sinae.
Monday 17th January 2022
Breakfast
The rich four cheese special pizza from Paesano that ate last night before going to the cinema is sadly repeating on me this morning and I worry that I've given myself a cheese intolerance from eating too much cheese. I know someone who did this from eating too many peaches which must have been really upsetting to discover. I spend the next half hour or so gladly nearing the end of my book, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, while sitting on the toilet.
I'm at the point where everyone is really obsessively following each other round in a way that can only mean something really bad is going to happen in the last forty pages. Every day John Singer visits the New York Café three times, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He writes instructions on a piece of paper for the restaurant owner: 'Each morning for breakfast I want an egg, toast and coffee...' For lunch he requests soup, a meat sandwich and milk, then three vegetables, fish or meat and a beer for dinner, 'Thank you.' I'm not sure why but I picture the New York Café looking a bit like Donut Time in Tangerine, with large windows on the corner of a street beaming out hard white light onto the dark street.
All the way through Licorice Pizza I'm wondering when the pizza and the licorice is going to show up. There's a really good re-occurrence of martinis which I've only ever tried once and I think really are the epitome of adult elegance. I add martinis to the mental list I've made of things to get into before I turn 30. I google HAIM and watch the video for The Wire, the one where they all break up with their boyfriends, one of whom is played by Jorma Taccone from The Lonely Island who haven't entered my mind since about 2007. This morning, when reporting back to B, I tell her how the film was named after a chain of record stores in the Valley in LA that Paul Thomas Anderson frequented in his youth. B points out to me that that's what a record looks like, a licorice pizza.
Lunch
Leftover soup from frozen, made last week from a recipe from Instagram with old bread and cathedral city, followed by half of yesterday's Lunar cookie – full moon half moon total eclipse – and a very slowly brewed black coffee whilst typing. Very hot face now from all the hot liquids. Pull a thick black hair from between the keys. M eats from an olive oil lemon cake made on Saturday night from a Mina Stone recipe using a knife and a little spoon. It's so olive oily it's almost savoury.
Snack 1
Banana in the bath as remedy and reading Jack Halberstam talking about Toy Story
Snack 2
Unnecessary pre-dinner snack of ants on limp logs minus ants plus three slugs as shiny thick and *elegant* prunes. Finished The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and very sad ending.
Dinner
Leftover gratin that tastes a bit like oven, sliver of expensive Co-op salmon and last week's veg box cabbage - had to work right to the tight central leaves, for ones that weren't yellow or black spotted. Less leftovers tomorrow.