Wednesday 9 May 2012

The Internet is a wonderful place.

So I've had food on my mind a LOT today.  FOOOOOD, it's been saying.  Repeatedly.  It's Live Below the Line week, as I discovered via Christian Aid on Twitter on Sunday.  The idea is that you live on just £1 worth of food every day, for five days.  I decided to do my own variant, based on an article I read in the Times Educational Supplement the other week.  The article was about how the recession has led to many children being very hungry at school, and stated that, often, the free school meal was virtually the only food that some children consumed all day.  Although this stands to reason, I had never really thought about it too much, and it really struck me.  I have an extremely healthy appetite, and have always been lucky enough to have access to enough food to keep me going.

So that's been my week so far.  No breakfast (although admittedly I usually only eat Mini Eggs for breakfast), no break-time snack (usually a fair few biscuits and some fruit), a school dinner, and then very minimal food in the evening (so far it's been a small bowl of cornflakes each evening, tonight I am pushing the boat out with a slice of toast).  I am really, really hungry.  Really hungry.  I have been drinking big glasses of water in an attempt to delude my stomach into thinking it's full, but it's having none of it. And I've also been cheating a little bit. The worst time is early evening, when I would normally have either quite a large meal or a massive snack attack.  And this is only for one week.  It must be all-consuming when it's every single day.  And we expect these children to produce homework.

Anyway, reading Game of Thrones this afternoon was not the best idea.  I hadn't really noticed before, in my well-fed state, but George RR Martin writes about food A LOT.  Lots of really yummy sounding food.  For some reason I googled "Game of Thrones food".  Goodness me, there are a lot of blogs out there about people cooking food which is written about in books!  What a great idea!  People have been having Game of Thrones themed feasts, all over the world!  There are pics of Lemon Cakes, of which Sansa Stark is so fond, all over the web.  I particularly enjoyed www.fictionalfood.net, which was well written, and had great pictures.  If I hadn't had to go and get the kids from school, I think I possibly would have been on there for quite some time.

One of my favourite ever series of books is The Darling Buds of May series by H.E. Bates.  A lot of that is about the food - however rough life gets, the thought of a Sunday roast cooked by Ma Larkin always makes me feel a bit better.  Obviously others also derive a lot of pleasure from reading about food.  And then cooking it and making blogs about it.  Before the Internet, these people would probably never have been able to connect and share.  Without the Internet, I wouldn't have known about the appeal, which has led to a bit more insight for me into the lives of others.  The connections the internet forges can be a real source of understanding and exploration.  And you can look at pictures of Brown Broth like Arya would have eaten in Flea Bottom that someone has cooked on the other side of the world. 


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