Food tastes better when you’re hungry
On sandwiches in caves and toast and tea in the maternity ward.
Nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to The Boil Up, The Spinoff’s weekly food newsletter.
Whenever I’m asked about the best thing I’ve ever eaten, I travel back in time and below ground. As a teenager, I got it into my head that a great way to overcome my mild claustrophobia would be to attend Caving School, and so I spent my school holidays in Waitomo, abseiling, spelunking, swimming, climbing and crawling through subterranean passages with a motley group of teens and a couple of chaotic, kind instructors.
Each morning, a couple of kids per crew were given the responsibility of packing lunch. It was the same every day: two loaves of white bread removed from their bags and assembled into sandwiches filled with whatever was going; squares of luncheon meat, grated cheese, shredded iceberg lettuce, sugary mayo, leftover scrambled eggs from breakfast or sliced up cold sausages and ketchup. We’d stack the sandwiches back into the loaf bags and load them into a drybag along with the milk bottles we’d rinsed out and filled with double-strength Raro, and plastic sacks of scroggin. The most senior crews would usually mix the scroggin for everyone, making sure their bag was loaded with a few extra fistfuls of M&Ms.
By the time we broke out the scroggin, we’d usually been underground at least an hour. By the time the squashed bread bags were brought out, we’d usually been in the dark for so long it was hard to know the time until you’d taken your first bite of a slightly soggy luncheon-egg-tomato-mayo sandwich and felt the lunchtime dopamine release. Those sandwiches, eaten with cold muddy hands under headlamp beams, grains of sand crunching in my back teeth, every now and then a tangy-sweet swig of Raro when the bottle made its way round to me, and a sticky home brand muesli bar for dessert; this was the best meal I’ve ever had, not because the food was good, but because I needed it.
In the weekend news, we learned that Wellington Regional Hospital was taking toast and tea off the menu in maternity wards, citing cost cuts and nutrition concerns. By Monday, post-birth toast was back on following outcry from the public and government alike; an incredibly swift U-turn that had many wondering why folks in Aotearoa feel so strongly about a person’s right to toast and a cuppa after giving birth?
The answer seems obvious: anyone deserves a break after working that hard, and tea and toast are a classic break time combo. But they are also simple, palatable and comforting foods, easy to eat with one hand while cradling your newborn and a quick source of carbohydrates – and therefore, energy – when your body is depleted.
What I really love though, is all the quotes from mums about how bloody good that piece of toast tasted, all of which support my long held belief that food tastes better when you’re really hungry. Not teenager-just-arrived-home-from-school hungry or forgetting-to-eat-lunch-and-oops-it’s-3pm hungry (I hate that kind), but just-given-birth hungry, underground-for-4-hours hungry, post-surgery hungry, survived-a-car-crash hungry. The kind of hunger that doesn’t even register until someone pulls out a sack of sammies, or puts a piece of Vegemite toast and a cup of sweet tea in front of you.
The kind of bone-deep hunger that forces you to eat “mindfully” because nothing could distract you from the pure manna you are ingesting, every taste and texture heightened by ghrelin (the hunger hormone, which makes you more sensitive to flavour), dopamine (released when food is identified as a reward for all you’ve been through) and the sweet relief of experiencing something so intensely pleasant after a challenge.
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Weekly bites
We all know kai sovereignty is a massive issue in Aotearoa with weather events like Cyclone Gabrielle only highlighting the problems within our current system. In this excellent article, Ataria Sharman speaks with two University of Otago researchers looking at the mental health impacts of climate change on Māori kai sovereignty, focusing on communities along State Highway 35 in Te Tai Rāwhiti and employing whānau from within these communities to conduct interviews.
Last week saw the opening of the largest Asian supermarket in Aotearoa, right by Costco in Auckland’s Westgate. As Re:News reported, weekend customers were willing to wait two hours to checkout in order to access an unprecedented abundance of products from across Asia – upwards of 12,000 – some of which are impossible to find anywhere in Aotearoa, as well as the lower prices. According to RNZ, it takes the average customer around 20 minutes to visit every section of the supermarket, likely racking up about 2000 steps in the process. I am so excited to visit.
And finally, the results of Burger Wellington are in with chef Chetan Pangam of One80 taking out the top spot for his Nawabi Galouti burger which includes a galouti lamb patty, lamb snow, ghee, coriander, mint labneh and chicory in a croissant bun, topped with a pulled lamb shoulder filo cigar, served with gunpowder podi fries on the side. If I’m being real, it sounds like this burger is going a bit beyond the textbook definition of a burger (can a filo cigar be considered part of the burger if it is not included inside the bun?) however, before the Pōneke burger police come for me, let it be said that this kind of pushing out of the boat is the point of an event like Burger Wellington – and this burger sounds bloody good.
Snack Review
Kinder Bueno White 39g for $2.19 at Woolworths (but not all of them)
I’ve never met a Kinder product I don’t like, and the Kinder Bueno White is no exception – in fact, it might just be my favourite of all, although it has been years since I’ve had the pleasure of devouring a Kinder Pinguí.
You’d think that a Kinder Bueno White would just be a Kinder Bueno where they’ve swapped the milk for white chocolate, but that’s not how the folks at Kinder play. It is the same basic format: thin wafer dipped in chocolate, filled with a silky, milky hazelnut creme – but they have added a crunchy brown coating around the base and sides, like finely crumbled biscuit or a chocolate meringue? Whatever it is, it’s strange and delicious, adding further textural interest to a chocolate bar that is all about the contrast between that crispy wafer and the rich, creamy centre. My only gripe is that these are so light and ethereal, I am always left wanting more – although I can hardly deduct points for the snack being too good, and so this is has to be a 9/10.