A Hideous Coleslaw
By Emma Jane Gonzalez
I used to be a chef.
We’re all bored of discussing what happened “during Covid times,” but the thing is, when we entered lockdown, I was a chef. And now I’m not. And I’m still getting used to it.
Before that whole mess, I loved cooking. Feeding people carefully constructed meals with drizzles of goo and sprinkles of crunchies and dustings of tiny delicate something or other made me feel so good, so connected. Think about it this way: when you cook for someone, you take objects that come from the earth, then you use your hands to transform them, giving them depth and shape. You lovingly serve that to another person. They find pleasure in it. That thing then enters their body!?! It sustains them. It works its way through them and then it exits?!? What could be more intimate? And on top of that, I was in a kitchen full of buddies, talking shit as we chopped and scooped and wiped and tasted and sweated together. I’m fully romanticizing it, but it was great.
Then everything went weird, and my life got really quiet. And I lost my appetite.
During lockdown, those of us with privilege found hobbies. A lot of folks took to the culinary arts. They were posting perfect buttery lamination, fizzing kombuchas, dough babies softly rising in newly purchased proofing baskets. But that part of my brain turned off. Solitude gave cooking and eating a hollow feeling. I found other crafts. I embroidered items that didn’t ask for embroidery.
I was learning something that had gone strangely unnoticed before. I don’t like cooking for myself. Not because I am selfless. Probably because I need validation– like my taste buds require an audience. But it’s also about what food is to me. It’s a vehicle for love, care, and connection. For just a single plate, it’s not fun. How did I not know this?!
So I was heating up peas, mostly.
I ate frozen peas at nearly every meal. Toast with peas. Pasta with peas. Rice with peas. That was pretty much the list. Then when the weather warmed, I’d visit the farmer’s market, a place I used to find inspiring. I’d buy beautiful veggies and eggs, hoping to relight my flame. But it didn’t happen. My body benefited from the nutrients, but my spirit felt nothing. One week, I forced myself to start a jar of sauerkraut. The cabbage was about to wilt, I had to. Once it had a gentle funk on it, I opened the jar and scooped a pile into a bowl (instead of directly into my mouth, progress!). I thought, I made a thing, I need to honor the thing by treating it well.
‘Twill be coleslaw.
When I tell you this coleslaw was ugly, I mean it with my whole heart. Instead of perky crispy cabbage, my sauerkraut was limp and pallid, like it needs sunshine or a multivitamin. I made the twisted choice to throw black garlic into my aioli along with the fresh garlic, turning it the color of cement. Once those two ingredients were combined, I sprinkled a few sunflower seeds and raisins on top (I’m the kind of pervert who likes raisins with my mayo), and that was that. It was glossy and gray and beige and flaccid. No asymmetrical plating or microgreen garnish could save it; this was a homely fucking dish. It was also rich and tangy and salty and sweet and zippy and unctuous and so delicious that for a moment I remembered who I was. Alone in a room, the food tasted good.
I’m still negotiating my relationship with food, with feeding, with joy. I do other things for work now, perhaps it’s a healthier dynamic, a more balanced sense of identity. The charged hunger that used to exist within me hasn’t returned with its original force, but there’s a craving. Longing is better than numbness, I think. And I have yet to recreate that perfect, hideous coleslaw. Someday I’ll make it for someone else, and all my complicated feelings will travel through their body and into the sewer system.
And that’s the nature of things, I guess.
Emma Jane Gonzalez is a vegetable enthusiast who books and manages events for a rooftop farm in Brooklyn. She would describe her personal style as Fran Fine meets Your Annoying Little Brother. She has one dog and a growing collection of whistles.
Racheal Bruce is an illustrator and educator from St. Louis. Her work imbues the feeling that a fantastical unreality could exist in our physical world, with all of the whimsy and eeriness that comes with it. She’s curious how an audience interacts with their own feelings of superstition.