Several years ago when I started thinking about creating a character and ultimately a show I was at a point in my life where I found myself single and resorting to barely cooking for myself. Whipping up the easiest quickest thing…actually what I found myself doing was resorting to the culinary habits of my student days ie. cooking pasta from a packet and pesto from a jar.
My grandmother had just lost my grandfather and, after 63 years of marriage and cooking for him every day, lost the will entirely to cook for herself. One afternoon I decided I would cook a green curry from scratch. I sourced ingredients as rare as fresh lemongrass. It did briefly cross my mind that perhaps I should invite someone over to eat the curry with me after I had gone to so much effort, but I then decided against it, that I just wanted to cook for myself. My room mate was shocked. “Are you going to all that trouble just for yourself?” Amazing. Yes. Am I not worth it? In fact making a green curry from scratch isn’t as challenging as one may think especially when following Jamie Oliver’s brilliant recipe in his book, 30 Minute Meals it takes no time at all to chuck all the main ingredients into a food processor and spin for a few minutes. And anyway even if it did take an hour or so, was I not worth it to make the effort for myself?
Interested in this cross generational issue, with my grandmother at age 89 in the same boat as me, I looked into the facts and figures and was astounded to read that now more than ever there are more single people than people in couples. That’s the majority of people perhaps not making any sort of effort to cook for themselves.
Looking at the number of people who are single. One might be single for one’s whole life. What a tragedy if you have not managed to feed yourself for years because you didn’t think you were worth it. I’m no doctor but that isn’t right.
We all need to eat and at the end of the day, darling, one can be creative when cooking. Not even with the actual cooking if thats not your bag, but you could don a feather boa as you open a packet of salmon or open a tin of beans. The thing is you can be creative throughout your day, its simply up to you to open your eyes to things not always looking like you think they ought to.
So that was the inspiration behind Tallulah, to create a character whose intention is to inspire the lonely cook to make the effort, to dress up in the kitchen if they so wish, to bring back a bit of play to your life, because you yourself are worth it.
Thank you for taking the time to read and for visiting our site. Wherever you may be I wish you a wonderfully feathered day and bon apetit, darling.
