Serial Griever: Grief, Comfort, and Food

I apologise in advance. This week, my column was meant to be a cook-along-with-me style piece about one of my mum’s recipes, the power of comfort food, and family cookbooks. As always, and as with life, this did not go to plan. I have taken this hiccup as a sign from my mother to not sell her culinary secrets to The Saint. Thus, the recipe remains nameless, and its details obscured.

I gathered all my ingredients, set up my kitchen countertop like I was on a MasterChef final, and tried to recreate a dish I watched my mum make countless times. This was when the issues began, because trying to write down and give precise measurements for a recipe that comes from the family brain is a lot more difficult than I expected. It was pretty close to an absolute disaster. My kitchen looked like a chemical lab gone wrong, with fizzing pots and a frantic me, torn between laughter and tears. I won’t lie, amidst the giggles caused by not being able to write this column (and make a simple dinner) the way I had planned, there was also a realisation that I had lost the ability to ask, “Mum, how did you do that again?”

But what this can teach us, and has already taught me, is the benefits of trial and error. It's one of those things you hear so often it starts to feel patronising, but I just can’t seem to stop trying and erroring. It might take a few attempts to get the dish back to what I remember it as, and I may not even get there at all, but in trying and building on it, I am coming to terms with a new part of being a motherless daughter.

I quite easily could have lied, written about something edible for you all to follow along with, and pretended it was a super comforting experience for me — but I think this mess, this fumbling attempt, tells a better story, not just about cooking, but about grieving and carrying on.

Illustration by Aoife White