EATING alone? So often, it just seems easier to chuck something on a slice of toast for dinner when you’re dining solo, than go to the effort of cooking a whole proper meal. For food writer Janneke Vreugdenhil, her toast topping of choice was anchovies and avocado – if she could bring herself to eat at all. “After my husband left me three years ago, at first, I couldn’t eat,” she remembers. “I’m a food writer so I’m used to cooking; food is a big part of my life. I get up in the morning and I think about food; I go to bed and I think about food, and suddenly, food was the last thing on my agenda.” It was after around six months of living alone – aside from when her two sons were with her – that the Dutch cookery book author and critic finally seared herself a lone wolf of a steak. That process of swapping dinners of crisps, supermarket soup and bowls of oatmeal, led to her rediscovering her joy of food, and to recipe ideas, and finally to Solo Food, a cookbook of dishes perfect for one. She considers the book her “therapy” because it drove her to cook for herself daily, and enjoy it, until “it became a new normal thing to do”. “After a while, I didn’t eat dinner in front of the television. I decided to sit at the table and properly eat my food with a knife and fork and… [Read full story]
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