Ezra Woodger

The Way to a Man’s Heart

I tip finely sliced red onion into hot oil and watch it begin to sizzle and spit. My plastic chopping board is warped- a mishap involving a hot pan years ago- but on it rests garlic and red pepper, diced into cubes as uniform as I can get them. A lot of people think you need to add the garlic and onion at the same time, but garlic is actually at its most flavourful when crushed and stirred in later in the dish, so the oil doesn’t cook off. Burnt garlic is rather bitter. 

When the onion is soft and translucent, I tip in the pepper and garlic along with a quick grind of salt and pepper. The recipe doesn’t call for it, but I sprinkle in some smoked paprika anyway. No measuring spoons, I just allow my nose to judge the correct balance. The result is a delicious, heady aroma as the spice blends with peppers which soften under the pressure of my spatula. While I wait for my added chopped tomatoes to simmer, I spin around the kitchen, piling up dirty dishes and stacking them next to the sink. Cleaning as you go is an important part of the cooking process, I think, as I fill the basin with bubbles. There’s nothing worse than sitting down to enjoy a meal and looking up to realise half the job has yet to be done. 

The sauce is rich and red, with steam rising to fog up my glasses as I take a deep inhale. I have left two rings of pepper floating on top of my concoction, and into these I crack two eggs. Some of the white overflows, but it doesn’t matter. I replace the lid and spin again, voice rising to match the chorus spilling from the speaker beside me. This recipe is taken from a weekend I spent at a summit for Jewish university students. Volunteers woke up early to be in the kitchen for 7am so they could make the rest of us breakfast, and we crowded onto tables with bleary eyes and eager, hungry faces. My friend Kate, feigning offence that I had decided to lie in, grinned. ‘My dad makes this all the time. I’ve always wanted to learn how.’ 

After a little over five minutes, I eat shakshuka directly from the pan. The yolk spills golden and mixes with tomato red, and I think it looks like a sunrise.

***

Anorexia’s greatest lie is that it is an act of discipline. It will tell you: to live my lifestyle requires self-control. Most people lack this self-control. Do you?
You tell it that no, of course you don’t. You have never been so in control in your entire life. Everyone in the world live their lives controlled by food- but not you. Never you. 

I was sitting in the back of an ex-boyfriend’s car holding a single stick of pepper. His mother was driving, pretending- to her credit- to not stare at me in the rear-view mirror. I had done my best to sneak out without alerting my own mother, but she had caught us in the doorway. The kitchen stretched out behind her, orange tiles against dark wooden beams which reached into an impossibly large, yawning space.

‘Have you eaten today?’ she asked.
I tried to lie, but my hesitation betrayed more than words ever could. In those days, my head was foggy. Pale, chapped lips fought clumsily with language slowed by a heavy tongue. She turned without a word and we waited. Heard her pulling things out of cupboards and I began to panic suddenly, feeling like an animal cornered in a trap. My hand wrapped around the flesh above my elbow and I squeezed it as tight as I could. My boyfriend Oscar, well-meaning but utterly at a loss, stood in silence. After a moment, she returned with a Tupperware about the size of my palm. Inside were about half a pepper’s worth of pepper sticks and some slices of tomato. 

I shook, eyes wide. Staring at it made me feel nauseous; saliva was beginning to build at the back of my throat. I thought about dropping it, letting the vegetables spill out onto the carpet and watching them bleed red into the filthy fibres. I could throw it away once we were out of the house. She had no idea what she was doing. She had no idea how hard I was working. 

I took the box and held it in my lap as we set off down the winding country lanes around our home. Oscar’s mother made an attempt at small talk, but my eyes were glued to the plastic lid. The clips sealing it were dark blue, and I traced one with my finger. Maybe I could just try one, he suggested. My boyfriend’s voice seemed awfully distant for someone sitting close enough for our thighs to touch. I trembled. My fingers tensed and the seal popped open. Just one, he asked. For him. The slice of pepper looked curved, wicked from my perspective, but the smell was sweet and delicate. A droplet of water landed on my thumb as I pinched the thing, and it ran down my palm cold and clear. I was shivering in my hoodie, as I always was, wrapped up in layers upon layers to fight the constant chill that seemed to follow me and nobody else. 

I had never wanted to eat anything so badly in my entire life. I was tired, and terrified, and even the thought had guilt rise acidic in my throat like bile. I stared at the stick of pepper between my thumb and forefinger, and in the backseat of a deep blue family car, I started to sob. 

Through panicked and shallow breaths, I could hear Oscar beside me asking what he could do to help. He sounded quiet and desperate, and for a moment I considered that I might hate him. Crying hurt my head, boring through the dull ache that usually sat at the base of my skull with a throbbing that swelled on each inhale. I hurt all the time. I was so tired. Every time I stood up, I thought I might faint. If I got into a shower that was too hot, the sudden change in temperature had a small chance of stopping my heart. These things thrilled and disgusted me at once. He thought he could help me? He couldn’t even begin to understand. I choked out that I needed his best friend, PJ. They had been in recovery. They knew how I felt. Oscar fell silent and pulled out his phone. 

I took the tub up to his bedroom, and the three of us crowded onto his single bed. Oscar had a small room, but it was filled with books and figurines upon figurines stacked on every available surface. His desk was barely visible beneath scattered books and paper. I pulled one of his stuffed animals towards me and squeezed it, finally beginning to feel my sobs fading into small, snivelling hiccups. PJ sat in front of me and spoke, their voice calm but firm. 

‘You need to eat it.’ They said.
My lip wobbled, but they shook their head. ‘I’m serious. If you don’t eat it, you’re going to have to go to a clinic, and the one around here closed down. They’ll send you to Scotland.’ 

Oscar opened his mouth as though to protest, but my eyes were fixed on PJ. I stopped crying. They continued. ‘We aren’t moving until you eat at least one.’ 

I did. One by one, I raised five pepper sticks to my mouth with shaking hands and ate them. My bites were small, and I counted my chews before swallowing. When I had finished, the pair hugged me and asked if I wanted anything else. I nodded. I feared speaking it aloud would infuriate something invisible and terrifying, as though the slice of bread they handed me was the ultimate betrayal. 

My fragile, dying body rejoiced even as I fought the urge to spit it out again. We curled up in a nest of blankets and I promised myself I would never get that hungry again. 

*** 

‘Safe foods’ refer to certain foods that people suffering from an eating disorder are able to eat with relatively little stress or anxiety. These are less about nutritional value or calorie content, depending instead on how it makes the individual feel. For example, there is an inside joke in the recovery community about how much everyone depends on porridge oats, particularly in the early stages. They’re warm, simple, nutritious. A dish of versatility that can be experimented with and adjusted depending on confidence and comfort level. And, most importantly, they taste the same every time you make them. Dependable. 

I stood beside the stove with the ingredients beside me. Oats, milk, peanut butter, honey, and banana. No scales; I had to learn to stop weighing everything I was planning to eat. I tipped the oats into a saucepan and added just enough milk to cover. It looked like too much, far too much, but so did most dishes. I took a deep breath and clicked on the gas, letting the hob flare to life. 

While the oats were cooking, I peeled the banana. I sliced exactly half of into neat, even sized pieces, and ate the other. The peel hinted at perfection- yellow, with just enough brown spots to reveal the sweetness of the ripened fruit. It was soft and gave easily beneath my teeth. I tipped the now-steaming oats into a bowl and arranged the sliced banana in a curve on top, placing each one individually at the rim. A teaspoon of peanut butter- chunky, never smooth- followed, right in the centre. Finally, as a finishing touch, a generous drizzle of honey, which fell from the spoon in delicate ribbons. 

To those with disordered eating habits, food serves two purposes. Food as fuel- an ugly necessity of human existence. Food as vice- eating is a weakness. A person becomes a slave to their body’s impulses. You’re going to give up true happiness just because you aren’t strong enough to say no. Of course, an eating disorder declines to mention that ‘true happiness’ will shift and move further from view the closer you come to achieving it, like a mirage in a desert. With enough discipline you’ll get there. ‘There’ is, in all truth, an illusion. Unless it’s a hospital bed. Or worse. 

Food, in reality, exists in a social and cultural space far beyond the shallow concept of necessary evil. 2000 years ago, the Temple of Jerusalem- centre of life in ancient Israel (1)- was destroyed. Without a space to commune and worship, the temple was transferred to the family table.

‘Every home a temple; every family a sanctuary; every table an altar; every meal an offering; every Jew a Priest.’ (2)

Eating then draws spiritual significance. When we sit down for Shabbat dinner, the space becomes as holy as the Temple was to those long ago. Blessings are said over two loaves of challah, bread braided with three strands so together they intertwine the six days preceding the day of rest. The loaves are sliced and shared, passed around to family and loved ones as the candles glow around us. 

The countertop was drizzled with a little oil instead of flour, to avoid drying out the dough and ruining elasticity. I rolled up my sleeves, but still found the cuffs of my jumper coated anyway, bursts of powdery white running up my arms and dashed across the back of my jeans. I had a habit of wiping my hands on my thighs to clean them off, and was covered in ghostly handprints. The dough had been allowed to rise twice, an hour at a time, and was now a large, smooth mass tipped out of the bowl and onto the waiting surface. I carefully separated two halves, put one aside, and cut three even pieces from the ball remaining. These were rolled into long, sausage-shaped strands, as near to identical as possible. Then I was able to draw them together at the top, dough twisted back into one unit, and I began to braid. Given the proper time to rest, dough should stretch beautifully, and allow itself to be manipulated by the baker with relative ease. Three-strand challah is essentially a plait, and the process is much the same as how you would braid hair. Over and under in a steady, repetitive motion. The same is done to the other, and two separate baking sheets are prepared for each. Slowly, the air shifted from a delicate, yeasty scent to a richer aroma. It swelled into the kitchen, warm and sweet. 

I love making bread because it can’t be rushed. Along with the two hours minimum for proving, bread made by hand requires at least ten minutes of kneading to ensure the gluten is activated and the dough can rise (3). During this time, I don’t focus on anything else. There are just my two hands as I push and pull, push and pull, rolling with the heel of my palm until a previously stiff lump of flour and yeast becomes a smooth, supple ball at my fingertips. I press a digit into the surface. A slight indentation before it bounces back. Perfect. 

The way food can act as a means of preserving cultural identity can be identified in many different cultures and social spaces. By interviewing South Asian women living in a small town in West Yorkshire, researcher Razia Parveen found that food can contribute to a vivid and shared cultural memory. The women didn’t just talk about food, but rather reminisced about the first time they had made a dish back in their homeland, and explained how meals were made traditionally compared to the adaptations and developments in their newfound community (4). Food preparation and consumption was a way for these immigrant families to preserve and explore their own culture, even as they moved far from home.

***

Of course, communities are not always a birthright. They can be forged and joined, and I found myself searching for connection in the face of a task that seemed insurmountably difficult. Surprisingly, the solution came in the place I had previously found to be a source of near constant comparison with others. Instagram, as it happens, has a reasonably sized recovery community, and they welcomed me with joyous celebration. The process was simple. Post a picture of the meal you had prepared, and others would congratulate you for managing to make and eat it. We would share tips and recipes, excitedly typing out our latest triumph over a food previously terrifying enough to be unthinkable. When I had a full-fat cola instead of diet, they were the first people I told. Hundreds of faceless accounts all dedicated to exactly the same goal- to thrive in spite of illness. 

The space was the complete opposite to those I frequented whilst ill. Before Tumblr cracked down on adult and offensive content (5), there was a large pro-ana community. The term refers to those who believe anorexia to be inherently good, and that it should be pursued in order to achieve the perfect body. It is a state of mind defined by mental illness, not logic, and we shunned rational thought like a crowd succumbs to the hysteria of the herd. Anorexia makes spiteful, cruel creatures of us all, and we fuelled ourselves on competition and judgement. I hated those who were losing weight faster than me as much as I admired their strength. I revelled in comments jealous of my body and begged people to scold me when I made a stupid mistake, like succumbing to the animal instinct to feed. We were defined by hatred for ourselves and everyone around us. No one was on our side, and no one understood. 

I stayed up late to talk online to a group of other anorexic people. We held each other accountable so we could reach our goals- or so we told ourselves. I once admitted to eating half a pizza and felt sick with guilt at the horrified responses of my peers, hunched over my laptop like a confessional. 

When I chose recovery, I messaged that I would be leaving the group. I told them I hoped they could all come to the same conclusion and get better. They were thrilled for me; we told ourselves we were ‘pro-recovery, just not in it’. A pretty lie, but it made us feel better. One of the girls I had grown closest to sent me a private message of congratulations, and I earnestly responded that I hoped she would find her way too. 

I just need to lose a bit more for school.

I frowned. how old are you?
It occurred to me suddenly that, in anorexia’s selfish cloud of obsession, none of us ever bothered to ask anything about each other. I barely even knew her name- Clara could have been a purely online persona.

The three dots appeared. 13. 

I froze. She was so, so young. Just a baby. And she hated herself, and I had contributed to that. I had contributed to a cycle of hate and fear and burning, hollow guilt. This wasn’t a community, I realised. This wasn’t supportive and understanding, it was poison. Poison that was killing children. That could have killed any number of people I knew. I cried softly over my computer and tried to pretend that I didn’t already miss her resolve. 

Months later, I received a message. My Instagram account had been growing slowly, and I posted almost daily with messages of support and updates from my life. It hadn’t been smooth, but I was eating three meals a day, plus snacks. I shared recipes I had tried and tweaked. My friend ran a blog with some truly delightful recipes using oats. I opened the message. Clara began with a Hi! and a smiley face emoji. She apologised for not keeping in touch, but just wanted to let me know that she had been keeping up with my posts and saw how well I was doing. She had decided that if I could do it, she was going to give it a try. 

I cried again. I told her how proud I was of her, and followed her recovery account back instantly. With open arms, we welcomed her and joined in her victories and struggles. Although we would never meet, I had never felt so much support both given and received. There was love in her photos of pasta. Love in the ways she would drizzle syrup over handmade, heart shaped pancakes. 

***

A few months into my recovery process, my granddad passed away. It hadn’t been a shock, but grief gripped us nonetheless. After he died, we spent months searching for a recipe for orange buns. As twins, my brother and I were sent to stay with our grandparents as a pair, but baking was reserved for granddad and me. He had a footstool for me to reach the countertop, my tiny hands gripping the fruit as I allowed him to show me the correct way to grate off the zest. Giggling as the air brightened with the fresh scent of citrus, batter sticky on my lips.

They had long since gotten rid of the recipe book. Of course, they hadn’t needed it. Granddad knew the recipe by heart. I didn’t even remember a recipe book present during our baking sessions. Collectively we became desperate, fuelled by an unspoken but unshakable determination. We hadn’t eaten them in years, but now it became a necessity. My mother messaged the chef on social media, nan scoured charity shops. I tugged at the threads of memory, trying to piece together a child’s recollection of cosy weekends and sweet treats. They weren’t normal cupcakes; the outside crust had a stickiness to it, giving way to a soft, fluffy interior. There had to be something I had forgotten. Finally, after months of searching, mum managed to find a copy from an online second-hand bookshop. The sleeve was curled with use, and I pressed my palm flat against the pages to take in every word all at once. Spread before us were the instructions for my granddad’s orange buns. 

The rest of my family left the baking to me, leaving the kitchen as I rolled up my sleeves. Somehow, we knew this was something for me. The addition of ground almonds had surprised all of us, but as I tipped the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl, it looked right. The pile of orange zest sat on the chopping board and I carefully sliced the fruit in half, making sure to roll each one across the counter a few times with my palm to release as much juice as possible. That had been a tip learnt from my father, who made Thai noodles with lime every Boxing Day using leftover turkey. Orange ran down my arms as I juiced them, sticky and cool. This had been my least favourite part as a child, growing frustrated with my inability to apply enough pressure to the juicer. As an adult the process was much smoother, flesh breaching beneath my grip. I smiled, a little sadly. When the dry and wet ingredients were combined, I carefully spooned mixture into the baking tray. I remembered we never used cake cases, so I didn’t. Heat from the oven bloomed when I opened the door, and I slid the tray into the centre and waited. 

They were exactly as I remembered them. Golden, with a dome atop a squat, smooth base. The kitchen smelled of fruit and had a distinct nutty warmth. I piled them onto a plate once they were cool enough to remove from the rack and presented them, beaming. We sat around the dining room table with a cup of tea and an orange bun. I took a bite, and only after swallowing did I remember that I had promised myself not to eat today. Relapse, I had reassured myself, was a natural part of recovery. It was okay to occasionally make a mistake or slip back into old habits, especially in such stressful circumstances. I stared at the bun in my hand, now a crescent moon shape. I hadn’t even thought about it. A grin slowly spread across my face. I hadn’t thought about eating it at all. There had been no calorie breakdown in my brain, no subtle bouncing of the leg to begin to burn off whatever I swallowed. There was just a steaming mug of tea, a baked good, and my family members wiping crumbs from smiling faces. 

***

Food exists as a means of exploring cultural identity and preserves a human condition far beyond survival instinct. Eating disorders develop for a variety of reasons, but they all place a distinct moral weight on food and the consumption of it. I thought I was failing when I allowed myself to eat. When I wasn’t feverishly tracking my intake, mentally breaking down meals into macros and calories and carb content, I was letting myself down. Every second not spent working on “self-improvement” was a betrayal of the perfect, beautiful person I could be. The ghost of him sneered over saucepans and in the mirror. He was a terrifying mix of bones and angles, hypnotic in the way his spine seemed to arch from beneath pale, shrivelled flesh. He would follow me on my 6am runs, watch me rest my forehead on the toilet seat with tears streaming down my face and saliva on my lips. He tilted my head upwards with a fingertip cold enough to fog my breath. I blinked, and he looked like an angel. 

Changing the way we see our bodies is only half of the battle in terms of eating disorder recovery. Sure, we need to learn that how we look doesn’t reflect worth, and that our bodies deserve the nutrition needed to survive. That fat isn’t evil, or ugly. But food isn’t about nutrition. If it were, we wouldn’t feel the need to explore and expand our sensory experiences with new flavours and scents. In a study of Armenian-American women, Avakian noted that food preparation, while socially complex, was ultimately ‘an act of love’ (6) that brought individuals closer to their shared cultural heritage. If preparing food for others is love made physical, is it not the same for the self? In the early days of recovery, I spent considerable time on the aesthetics of the food I would prepare. Arranging banana into neat rows took a little extra time, but I needed reminding that it was worth the effort. A dish, no matter how simple, was worth it. By extension, so was I. 

***

I no longer use my recovery Instagram account. It still exists, as a reminder of who I was and that there is a support network should I ever need it. Instead, I post a quick snapshot of my bubbling pan to my main account. Was craving comfort food! I type. As I’m crumbling grated cheese, I receive a private message from my friend Kate. 

Is that shakshuka I see! She says. I smile through a mouthful of egg.
Learnt from the best. I tell her. At the summit, she and I had both been committee members of our university Jewish Society. Now she’s the president, and keeps me updated on events even though I moved many miles away. She was trying to organise a shakshuka making class for members, although they were running into some issues regarding kitchen space. It had been one of her favourite parts of the summit weekend, and she knew everyone would benefit. As I begin to wipe down the countertop after I finish eating, she sends me a photograph.

You’ll never guess what. 

I open it. The image sends me backwards months in time, and I smile. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, the society was unable to host its regular Friday Night Dinners. As the main social event for Jewish students at the university, it hit us all hard. We mourned the loss of such a special, spiritual time to gather, to relax and share a meal. Rather than abandoning hope, Kate and the secretary, Dani, had decided to offer home delivered food packages which contained a starter, main, dessert, two challah rolls, and two tea lights for the Shabbat candles. Although they were wearing masks when I opened the door, I could tell they were grinning. Dani passed me a brown paper bag, the contents still warm within. 

‘Can we get a photo for the Instagram?’ Kate asked. I nodded, and we stood in my doorway. I clutched the gift close to my chest. The picture wasn’t the best quality, and we squinted in the afternoon sunlight. I was wearing tracksuit bottoms and a baggy jumper. My socks weren’t matching. 

I blink and look at my phone properly, focusing, and the three of us standing in the doorway of my third year student house has been enlarged and printed onto a UJS (7) vertical banner for this year’s summit. I laugh aloud. 

They love that photo so much. Kate adds. I shake my head and look at it again. We are blurry and awkward, but smiling broadly beneath masks. I remember how warm the candles seemed to glow as I held the challah aloft in my bedroom. The union had seen our photograph and decided that this moment, the gift of food in adversity and a time of crisis, was to be the face of the organisation. 

Dani sends me a message. Shakshuka! She adds a heart emoji. That looks amazing! 

I thank her. UJS are absolutely right. 

Footnotes

1. ("Temple Of Jerusalem | Description, History, & Significance" 2022)

2.  (Poupko 2007)

3.  ("Kneading Bread Dough" 2022)

4. (Parveen 2016)

5.  (Liao 2018)

6. (Avakian, 2005)

7. Union of Jewish Students

   
   
   
   
   
   Bibliography

Avakian, Arlene Voski, and Barbara Haber. 2005. From Betty Crocker To Feminist Food Studies. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Beagan, Brenda L., and Andrea D'Sylva. 2011. "Occupational Meanings Of Food Preparation For Goan Canadian Women". Journal Of Occupational Science 18 (3): 210-222. doi:10.1080/14427591.2011.586326.

"Kneading Bread Dough". 2022. The Hummingbird Bakery. https://hummingbirdbakery.com/blogs/hummingbird-bakery-blog/kneading-bread-dough.

Liao, Shannon. 2018. "Tumblr Will Ban All Adult Content On December 17Th". The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/3/18123752/tumblr-adult-content-porn-ban-date-explicit-changes-why-safe-mode.

Parveen, Razia. 2016. "Food To Remember: Culinary Practice And Diasporic Identity". Oral History 44 (1): 47-56.

Poupko, Yehiel. 2007. "JUF News : Eating As A Celebration Of Jewish Life". JUF News. https://www.juf.org/news/thinking_torah.aspx?id=28094.

"Temple Of Jerusalem | Description, History, & Significance". 2022. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Temple-of-Jerusalem.

Wright, Kathrine E., Julie E. Lucero, Jenanne K. Ferguson, Michelle L. Granner, Paul G. Devereux, Jennifer L. Pearson, and Eric Crosbie. 2021. "The Influence Of Cultural Food Security On Cultural Identity And Well-Being: A Qualitative Comparison Between Second-Generation American And International Students In The United States". Ecology Of Food And Nutrition 60 (6): 636-662. doi:10.1080/03670244.2021.1875455.