The Good Stuff

I spend a lot of my working life thinking about food.

How it looks. How it moves. How many people it needs to feed. Whether it can be made better, faster, more consistently. Food becomes timings, quantities, systems, plates and expectations. And then occasionally you eat somewhere that reminds you what all of that is actually for.

A table outside. Food in the middle. Children disappearing into bushes and coming back with something they’ve picked.

Just time.

There is something about eating outdoors that seems to change the pace of everything. Lunch stretches into the afternoon. People get up and wander off, come back, pour another glass, pick at what is left on the table. Children eat when they’re hungry and run when they’re not. The edges become less defined.

And the food somehow tastes better for it.

Not because it is more complicated. Usually the opposite. Vegetables, salads, something cooked simply, something picked nearby. Food that belongs on a table and is passed around rather than individually presented.

I think I need reminding of that sometimes.

Life can become very focused on what comes next. The next service. The next week. The next problem to solve. Even time off can quietly turn into another list of things that need doing.

But children are particularly good at exposing the ridiculousness of rushing. Give them a berry patch and they are completely occupied by one berry. Put them on the back of an old trailer and, for a while, that is the entire world.

There is probably something worth learning in that.

Good food has never only been about the food.

It is where you are, who is sitting beside you, how long you allow yourself to stay there and whether, for a few hours, you manage to stop thinking about what you should be doing next.

More tables outside.

More food in the middle.

More afternoons that are allowed to take as long as they take.