A chaotic breakfast routine

for a chaotic person

I’m sending this today, on a Tuesday, instead of yesterday, on a Monday, because I was inspired by Alicia Kennedy’s essay on oatmeal and routine. Although I managed to write it in under an hour, it was too late to send. So instead of publishing the post at the end of this month as scheduled, I’ve decided to send it today. I’m a chaotic person as per the headline!

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A nourishing bowl of oatmeal

The only food routine I cared about was Sylvia Plath’s.

Until I read

Alicia Kennedy

’s recent essay on changing her breakfast oatmeal routine to smoothies. That took me back to my old oatmeal routine faithfully complied with when I was living in London. (Real ones will remember the many Instagram stories about my oatmeal bowls.) To me, oatmeal made sense in London’s wet winters.

First, I’d roast my grains dry till fragrant—a tip that I gleaned from watching my mother make her special rice—or, if I was feeling particularly extravagant, in a spoonful of ghee, then add a pinch of salt and some water, and doggedly stir till it eventually became a gloop. My toppings were based on the fruit available (banana was a staple, even if I did come from a country that grows a staggering variety and live in a country that imports them at the expense poor banana producers), although, in a pinch, frozen berries came to the rescue. I’d finish with a faint sprinkling of brown sugar on top just so I could watch the crystals melt, resembling a beige-brown sari that I once owned. Of course, seeds for crunch. And then milk around the sides to make the gloop seem like a drowning island. If it’s an allegory for the country I was in, you’ll just have to excuse me for it.

I was shocked when my flatmate came into the kitchen one day and said she’d make us oatmeal and proceeded to microwave the oats and milk in a bowl, and after about a minute hand over my portion to me and start eating as if nothing had happened. Obviously I knew you could microwave oatmeal but I just hadn’t met anyone who did. Apparently, my flatmate was shocked that I took the time and care to actually make oatmeal on the stove, to patiently stir at intervals, when I could’ve used the time to go to the library before class. After that, I became the person in charge of all the cooking between us, and that I think enriched our friendship across continents, more than a bowl of shared oatmeal in winter.

I first ate oatmeal as a quasi-adult, in my third journalism job (or was it fourth?), when I was still living with my family and had gotten tired of idlis and dosais and muddy-looking sathumaavu kanji¹ for breakfast. I made money, I made decisions, I was a real person with real and unique taste — I would proclaim at nothing and no one in particular. So I bought oatmeal, the quick cooking kind, without an idea of what to make and with a vague idea of how to make it². Cooking the oats in milk, resulted in a heavy porridge. And adding white sugar gave it no depth. It was bad; just straight up sugar. My dad’s comment of it resembling kalkandu pongal³ irked me enough that I decided oatmeal wasn’t for me. What was the point of eating something dense in Chennai?

And then I discovered oatmeal in London. With medium oatmeal groats. Using a Nigel Slater recipe no less, which in turn came from a champion porridge maker from Scotland. Turns out, water not milk makes oatmeal creamy without being too thickset. That adding cold fruits to hot oatmeal introduces a contrast of textures and sensations. After perfecting a basic oatmeal recipe, I started experimenting. Coconut milk instead of whole milk⁴. Brown sugar instead of white sugar. Sautéed apples in butter and cinnamon sugar. Sliced mangoes and peaches (which I had frozen previously); toasted coconut flakes and sesame seeds. A broken cardamom pod simmered in the water before adding the oats. A tiny tiny amount of crushed black pepper in honey instead of brown sugar. I had hacked becoming a real person with a unique taste.

A single crumpet grilled to perfection, topped with butter and fruits. Syrup is invisible because it has been absorbed.

But when spring called, oatmeal held no more sway for me. I yearned for my mother’s light idlis and the once-shunned sathumaavu kanji. Since I didn’t have the foresight to bring the kanji mix with me, I just turned to toast. Crumpets and jam. Old naans toasted and slathered with butter and honey. Shop bought bagels with mascarpone, fruit, and chaat masala. Wholegrain rye bread studded with sunflower seeds that was sucker punch sour from Lidl, which my flatmate introduced me to. Wholegrain rye topped with hummus, cheddar, and enough hot sauce to tear my insides out. Coarse wholemeal baps covered in cornmeal that I weirdly loved and very much miss. Toasted hot cross buns with salty butter. Sourdough with Nutella. My rice-loving soul embraced the comfort of bread and never looked back. I think, at that time, only my flatmate was eating her microwave oats topped with granola and fruit until I convinced to have an elaborate breakfast in our rundown student garden: toast with spreads bathed in the morning light.

Every successive breakfast was never the same, but it gave me joy in the chaos, an order in disruption. I still do have a routine of eating breakfast, because I love breakfast and, more importantly, because of digestive issues. My ulcers wake before me, so I have to forcefully feed myself in the morning or I cannot survive the next hour, let alone the day. Everyday, including yesterday, today (and possibly tomorrow), I wake up with a gnawing hunger that has to be put to rest with whatever is available. Old rice kanji, sathumaavu kanji, pongal, idli, toast, fruit, dates and peanut butter, bananas, pears, a handful of nuts...

As Kennedy writes, “Listen to your body is a truism, but sometimes it’s all we can do.” All I can do, at this moment, is to have breakfast because my body demands it. I try to get protein (mostly miss), carbs (definitely never miss), fat, and vitamins. I eat fruits in season, ones grown locally (at least within the confines of the country) as much as possible. Then I make coffee in an Aeropress, after manually grinding beans in a tiny grinder, because I enjoy it! And I take my coffee black because I can no longer digest milk; I never used to, I just tolerated it. Then I sit down to work on emails in between sips of coffee. Some days I watch a few videos on YouTube (yes I swear). Other days I play Wordle⁵. If I can resist the pull of other choices, I read a few paragraphs of the book I’m currently devouring. If I’m singularly disciplined, I write a few words in my diary, because sometimes even I require some order to keep the maelstrom in check. My routine is chaotic because I’m a chaotic person, always looking for patterns but regularly failing to notice them.

A breakfast spread in London.

When writer Rebecca Brill started whatsylviaate on twitter, chronicling everything Plath ate “according to her journals, letters, poems, the bell jar & other texts”, I was overjoyed. That although the latter’s life was plagued by darkness and dread, there were moments of pleasure for simple things. Like so many others, I too found solace in Plath’s culinary records that gave us a sense of what culinary America was like in the 50s and 60s. I learned that Plath too liked to have “cold new orange juice. Toast & bacon. Scalding coffee.” That staying in “my pajamas in scandalous laziness”, eating “apples, bananas & malt bread & hot coffee for breakfast which lasted 2 hours” can be a universal feeling. Sometimes my breakfast lasts two hours; sometimes it’s 15 minutes. Both give me joy and purpose in this chaotic world.

I’m certain my routine will change tomorrow, but what is constant is eating breakfast. Because breakfast became a necessity for me and one that I grew to love, I’ve decided to be unrestricted in my appetite (for food and pleasure), to make the most of fleeting moments like Plath before me, and honour the seriousness and sensuousness of everyday life.

At the dawn of 2021, I wrote about pleasure and resistance and how the binary should incorporate the role of labour systems and agriculture. Eating for pleasure is well and good, especially when there is no guilt or anxiety surrounding trendy restrictive diets that supposedly promise a better, shinier, newer self. Eating for pleasure is a privilege, especially in a culture where diets are tracked, calories are counted, and nutrition is assessed obsessively, so much that food becomes oppressive. Contrast this with the stark disparities in nutritional wellbeing around the world, accessibility and affordability of essentials even as industrial development is considered the ultimate goal. The state that decides these conditions are the ones that shape patterns of agricultural production and the consumption of food. And the withholding of it as well. In these conditions, eating itself becomes a privilege.

For food to then become pleasure, it requires labour, knowledge, and time. It also requires interrogating notions of unilinear progress, of capitalism, colonialism, and casteism. It requires agrarian change, investigating the homogenisation of local and regional culinary cultures and hierarchies in taste. But it makes little sense when we eat solely for pleasure while ignoring what’s happening around us, like the meme of drinking coffee amidst a burning room while saying to yourself, ‘This is fine’. Well, it is not fine. We should be able to hold beyond the binaries of pain and joy within ourselves; we should want the best for us and others, while also scrutinising the effects of consumerism. We should be able to recognise if the construction of national cuisines and identities (Israel’s and India’s) comes at the cost of oppressing people for decades (Palestinians and marginalised/oppressed caste, religion, gender) and undermining their identities⁶.

Claiming that there is no ‘ethical consumption under capitalism’ only to justify hauls from Shein and buying overpriced coffees from Starbucks isn’t the W one thinks it is. It is, in fact, moral nihilism. Holding oneself accountable and having ethical standards about consumption is much much better; caring about what you eat, what and how you buy, what you do is a wholesome privilege. I’m well aware that individual choices may not change everything, but they may just bring the cool relief of collective action when the world is already burning. Let’s be honest, we all want food; we all need food. It is essential and fundamental before it is a pleasure. But eating and enjoying good food for everyone shouldn’t be an outlier either.

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Miscellaneous

• The next paid subscriber post, a conversation with chef and researcher Elizabeth Yorke, will be sent out on 19 January.

• I will organise shelf offering’s schedule better and send an email soon with days and dates for paid and free subscription essays for the foreseeable future. Thanks to

  Devin Kate Pope
  for inspiring me to do this. Please read her latest on embracing the mundane, solutions to the dinner problem, and the agony of food kits. Very very good!

• If you haven’t read already, please read this scintillating and fun conversation with the editors of

  Feminist Food Journal
  which was sent on 5 January to my paid subscribers. Consider a paid subscription, if you can!

• Was also very moved by

  Jon Randell Smith
  ‘s latest essay, the dead cat in the freezer.

• Wellness is not a choice by

  anthrodish essays
  is a good essay on dualisms of body-mind, nation-state, wellness-diet identities.

• Also welcome back to

  Chiara Cui
  (who writes Rough Age) with this evocative essay on grief and big feelings!

This newsletter was updated with new information that will be missing in the email.

1. Sathumaavu kanji is a mix of different flours that is dissolved in water/milk just like oatmeal is, except this kanji is smooth and drunk like a smoothie. It’s what I have for breakfast these days; it’s easy to make first thing in the morning.

2. Also in life.

3. Another type of sweet porridge made with white rock candy cooked till creamy for special occasions.

4. Also, take it from me, a dollop of cold mascarpone on hot oatmeal is a surefire way to introduce pleasure into a dull grey day.

5. Also Connections and the Mini Crossword because it is NOT Sisyphean as someone suggested so rudely on twitter.

6. I’ve just given two examples and there are many many more. Don’t come for me!