The creating and eating of food has always been synonymous with love and contentment for me, and so sharing it feels personal. This is by no means a unique feeling, and I am by no means an accomplished cook or food writer, but here I am anyway.
As a Major People Pleaser, I need to have the food I share with someone be great, regardless of whether I made it myself. At my worst this has led to crippling anxiety when I have to make a decision about what to cook or where to go out to eat because what if it’s not great that means I’ve made a mistake and that means a regret we have to think about in the shower and drown out with Netflix. At my best, I am in my kitchen, chatting and laughing about everything and nothing with people I deeply care about, as they dot in and out to help me with chopping this or washing that, and eventually, magically, there some food for us to eat, and I am totally at peace with the world. Also at this happy end of the spectrum is when I find a restaurant or an item of food so good that I can’t help but shout about it to anyone and everyone.
There’s a little French bakery on King Street near Ravenscourt Park called Patisserie Sainte-Anne. It’s run by a Franco-Japanese family and almost all of the bakes are sublime and very French bar the Japanese loaves of Pain de Mie (aka Chocupan aka milk bread) which they make every Saturday. West London has a particularly high French-speaking population, which was never clearer to me than when I visited the shop and tout le monte parlait français. An ideal version of me would be speaking French to the bakery owner too, but alas I never did gagné cette baguette.
As I’ve always lived within a mile of the bakery, I’ve been there a many times, either to sit in or take something out. I seem to have a solid memory of every single time I’ve visited, most likely because I’ve always been happy stepping through their jingling pastel pink door. I don’t know whether that’s more to do with the bright pastel decor and the smell of fresh croissants, or because I’ve almost always gone in with or to buy something for someone I care about, but I’ll credit both in equal measure.
One particular piece of patisserie that is top 2 and not #2 is something they call ‘the Framberry.’ It’s a raspberry mousse cake and chocolate ganache on an almond biscuit base finished with a Barbie-pink white chocolate mirror glaze and raspberries and macaron shells on top. It’s gorgeous to look at and a complete joy to eat. Even though I can’t eat it myself anymore, I’m always excited to gift it to someone dear to me. It’s sort of become my ‘default’ gift, but I’d wager this is a better default than a bottle of wine. No seriously, just look at the thing.
And now, presenting, ‘To All The Framberries I’ve Bought Before’:
I bought my first Framberry along with some macarons for me and E to share in 2015. I was probably/definitely more hyped about it than he was, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.
I loved it so much that I bought it again just for myself a few months later. It was still perfect.
My mother and I shared a Framberry on a bench in Ravenscourt Park, as a last hurrah before the transplant. We’d actually go there quite often over those months, to get a pain au chocolat and coffee to take on a walk, and/or (but usually ‘and’) a pear Normandy tart for later. This was my last one, and therefore tasted the best.
For C to eat on the bus home when she came to visit. Her additional birthday cake that year was also from Sainte-Anne, an insanely good chocolate torte on which they iced a birthday message. She texted to say she ate the Framberry on the bus home and that ‘oh my god it’s amazing.’
For Y’s birthday/cheer-up present, along with her hand-painted JVN birthday card. I think it was a good move because we’re similar in our approach to showing affection; she got me a box of themed doughnuts on Valentine’s Day.
For K, J’s girlfriend, as a birthday preset because food is always good and I didn’t feel we knew each other all that well yet and of course I needed her to like me. Am I buying favour? Yikes. It’s cool, we’re closer now.
For A & Z, for having me over for dinner after exams, along with flowers for Z and a small jar of my grandmother’s homemade chilli powder for A (the only food gift that could ever surpass the Framberry). I walked to the station with a bouquet of irises and chrysanthemums in one hand the Framberry in its little box with the bakery’s pink & purple cat logo sticker in the other, wanting this to be my life always. A made incredible broccoli mac and cheese and I admired their beautiful plant-filled flat and related very hard with Z over lo-fi hip hop beats to study to. I got a text from A an hour after I’d gotten home telling me the Framberry was a revelation and I wanted to Han Solo it out with an “I know” but I, Lieutenant Commander People Pleaser (that’s right I promoted myself), just felt validated as hell.
This little dessert is one I fully back myself on to the point where I secretly want to watch everyone I’ve ever bought one for take their first bite and tell me how much they love it, but that’s creepy so I’m just about restraining myself. If I could make it myself you bet I’d rave about it more than I already do. For now, there is Patisserie Sainte-Anne.
Blueberry pancakes at Manuka Kitchen Fulham Road. This was brunch with a friend who I lost in touch with after being close in school for 2-3 years. When we reconnected, it was like no time had passed. She’s objectively one of the best people I have ever known and a magnificently fierce friend to have in your corner. Also, I’d always been meaning to go to this place, and I’m glad it was with her (and the adorable tiny dog at the table next door). I’m so glad our friendship what it is today.
After the transplant, I waited for my transformation into a glossy and upbeat Survivor with an aggressive ‘Life Coach’ vibe. It did not come. My piano teacher told me about a friend of hers who survived cancer and threw herself into practising the piano and her dedication made her that much better and she keeps entering competitions all the time because life is short and she spends each minute to the full.
I didn’t do that.
I am thrashing around to keep my head above water in the bath-tub of “self care” because it is the easiest thing to drown in the comfort of laziness. I have relinquished myself to a pair of laissez-faire guardians, and they’re both me; one is aloof and the other, timid. Their permissiveness has me oscillating between being appropriately gentle with myself and ruining my life, the anxiety is present either way.
Occasionally my (?old ?real) self breaks through and I greet her like an old friend I’ve run into on the way back from the shops like, “I didn’t know you lived around here!”, and she’s rightly incredulous, “Yeah, no, I’ve always lived here, I’m always around but you’re always surprised to see me. Hey can I please help you unpack all that crap you’ve got there?”
After the transplant, I was quietly thankful. I was loud enough in thanking and loving whom I had to, but how do you begin to thank someone who sacrificed so much of their life for you? I am lucky and undeserving. I feel so grateful and so guilty. These dichotomies are double-helixed into every cell now, mostly unconscious, always unrelenting.
I talk about it in a comedic way often enough to worry that it may crystallise into something funny and belie the complexity of how something so undeniably positive was overwhelmingly brutal. We make kidney jokes, my friends and I, and just today I pitched my shortened life expectancy in the air and batted it away with a laugh, ignoring the extra large font “15 to 20 years” sign flashing neon red around my peripheral vision. Sometimes, when we make kidney jokes, I see something waver in my friends’ expressions when they wonder if they or I have gone too far, and that this actually isn’t funny. Somewhere, Hannah Gadsby is shrugging her shoulders, exasperated.
I am so lucky to be here. I never truly considered that I might die. Both of these things are true.
I am so loved that she didn’t even hesitate when making the decision to donate her kidney to me. I feel guilty. Both of those things are true.
I would’ve made the same decision if the roles were reversed, but I didn’t have to be put in the position, so this is meaningless. I am so, so loved.
I have a responsibility to myself to look after myself and love myself as fiercely as I am loved by my family and best friends. I am emancipating myself from my current shitty guardians and reinstating old tumblr-blogging me. We have a lot of catching up to do.
The walls of the monastery are so intricately painted I wanted four hours to study each and every one of them. Tibetan Golden Temple at Coorg, Karnataka.
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