Ella Risbridger

& Other Recipes Worth Living For

Midnight Chicken

leonie wise

In offices, and tower blocks, and grey buildings in the city centre, the minute the sky peeks blue and bright through the double glazing, I start dreaming of gingham cloths and blue-rimmed white enamel; of tender little samosa-like parcels, filo on the outside, spiced lamb or bright peas on the inside; good bread or crackers, ready to heap with red pepper hummus and green harissa hummus; lazy tangles of quick-pickled onions, done in a matter of hours with a splash of vinegar, sugar and spices; an enormous wedge of pork pie, studded with boiled eggs, the golden yolks still a little soft and yielding to the knife. A Thermos of something boozy and hot, with the wind tugging at your hair, and the chill of it on your fingers.

It is so easy to eat distractedly: to have one hand on your phone, or one eye on your emails, or half a mind on what fork to use next. It is so easy to eat without thinking about what you are eating, or how you are eating it. But if you strip away the tablecloths and the cutlery and the manners, you strip away everything that might come between you and the feeling of being really, vividly, absolutely alive: fingers in the chicken carcass, grease and salt on the lips, grass against bare legs. And you can do this, really, anywhere. You don't need to be in an Enid Blyton book to step outside, to make something lovely to eat, and to take it somewhere green or wild. Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing; you probably have a minute - ten minutes, even - to step outside and breathe in and out. You can have a picnic wherever you are.

I didn't know this when I was working in an office; I spent months eating pre-packaged sandwiches at my desk, and wishing I was dead. It would be unfair to blame all of this on the sandwiches, but what is true is that as soon as I found , a green place in the city, I felt better. I had sort of forgotten that wild places are everywhere; I had sort of forgotten, I think, to look for little wild things that might have made me feel like I belonged. I didn't really know about the small and tender loveliness of daffodils pushing up through the earth in a city park, the secret sweetness of unexpected moss on an Underground platform, the breathless, irrepressible joie de vivre of butterfly-studded buddleia pressing through a hoarding.

The world is so hard, and life is so short: you must make things lovely where you can. You have to make mundane things like packed lunches into something glorious and important and worth having. You have to make ordinary days worth having, is the thing - and investing a bit of time in what you eat and where you eat it (which is really investing a bit of time in looking after yourself) is one of the easiest ways to do it.

Midnight Chicken quotes

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