Food as Love

In this episode, Roxanne and Catherine dig into the stories they grew up with around eating, where food came from, who made it, and what it meant. Catherine shares her seven years as a vegan and what that journey taught her about identity and choice. They explore the gendered labour hidden in plain sight at family tables: the women who cooked every Sunday lunch while the men carved the meat and got the best pieces, and what that quietly communicated, even in households where it wasn't completely foreign for dads to cook. Roxanne reflects on how respectability politics shapes her relationship with food, and the particular tension of asking for what you actually want. Both speak to the experience of cooking food from home while living abroad, and how a meal can be a thread back to culture, memory, and self. At the heart of it: the idea that how we feed ourselves, and others, is an act of love, and that learning to eat in a way that genuinely nourishes you is part of learning to take care of yourself.