A few years back, a friend of mine moved from inner-city Melbourne to Macedon in country Victoria with her two primary school-aged sons. It was a big though necessary change, made with much consideration and not a small amount of trepidation.
It took a little while for them to settle in to their own space but – once the boxes had been unpacked – this friend began to send me pictures of the breakfasts she had set about serving to her kids.
One morning might be slices of cheese, ham and sweet gherkins, while the next would see a small pot of yoghurt beside a slice of dark, seedy bread and a hardboiled egg.
It was a far cry from the Weet-Bix and Corn Flake combo that had seen her boys through previous school mornings in Melbourne. Or the Weet-Bix and honey match up that continues to sustain my own little tribe.
But her boys loved that it was different. They loved that they never knew what morning would bring. And no matter what my friend served, her kids ate it up.
The presumption I have made when faced with changing life circumstances has been to seek what comfort I can in the familiar. Of course if the surroundings and people are different, this can be difficult. Which is why there is such nurture to be found in familiar foods.
Familiar food might be the tube of Vegemite you pack on safari in Africa. The lollies I ordered online from Australia while living in Paris. Or the spices and condiments sought out by new arrivals to Australia in order to whip up a taste of the known.
It might be the chicken and apricot casserole your mum made once a week, and whose tradition you continue because it puts you back in touch with what it felt like to be hers.
All of this is what makes food so magical.
But faced with the inevitability of shifting life circumstances, my brave friend did something else: she embraced change, at her breakfast table as within her life.
And because she embraced change, her kids felt excited and enlivened by that taste of difference, too.
All of this came to mind at the dinner table last Thursday night, as my own two sons lamented my lack of imagination as it relates to lunchboxes.
Not coincidentally, their boredom with the status quo rings in time with some upcoming situational changes occurring for our own family. Exciting changes. Changes that require feeding by something other than a staple roster of chicken or ham or avocado sandwiches.
“Ok then,” I venture, “how would you guys feel about cold cooked instead of sandwiches once a week?”
Yes!
“Um, and maybe I could also make sushi on a Tuesday?”
We love sushi!
Ye-eah!
“Well then,” I say, feeling courageous enough to push the boat out further, “do you think you could handle ?”
Dhokla has been in my thoughts since a work colleague recently brought the dish to my attention. It is a classic Gujarati dish, made from soaked, ground and fermented chickpeas (or chickpea flour), or sometimes using rice or semolina, and usually served in large squares.
Savoury and redolent of curry leaves and mustard seed, it’s most commonly eaten at breakfast. But that’s not to say that a couple of Aussie-Indian kids might not be brave enough to eat it for lunch.
I say ‘brave’ not just because the flavours are new (my native Kashmiri cuisine doesn’t go the way of South Indian-style spice), but because the concept is, too.
Lunchbox ‘wog’ food, as I affectionately refer to it, is still deemed worthy of comment in our little section of Australia. Sushi, ravioli and paranthas are all fair game for childish nose-scrunching.
But when the comfort of the familiar no longer cuts it, well, that’s when the impetus is on each of us to work out how far we’re willing to travel away from ease in order to experience new things.
Looking for your new comfort food? Here's one take on d
Source: Darshana Vaghela
As it turns out dhokla didn’t make the lunch roster cut, but only because its spongy, delicate texture struggled to hold up against the rigours endured by school lunchboxes on the bike ride from home to school.
Still, it’s through this process that we’ve all become more comfortable and familiar with difference.
The food we know can ground us. And yet it’s the food we don’t know that can remind us just how exciting it can be to range a little farther from home.
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A delicious side for any meal
Savoury semolina cakes (dhokla)
