<spanclass="about"> Recipes are more than just instructions, whether it is food, or a recipe for disaster. <br> Recipes are deviant, magical and political. <br> Yoana and Alice, together with the occasional guest, will be cooking all kinds of recipes and their sounds and stories every other Saturday on the <spanclass="glow"><ahref="https://s2.radio.co/sde6c7b42e/listen">Worm radio</a>.</span></span>
Trauma and nostalgia are linked in the taste buds of our grandmothers.
<br> My grandmother loved potatoes. But not quite like any other person I <br>have known. She loved cooking them, serving them, eating them, she loved talking <br>about them. As a child, my grandmother lived alongside war, coups and <br>regimes. During times of hardship for people in Bulgaria, often potatoes were the <br>only thing to eat. I always felt that due to the shortage of food, her memories were <br>focused almost entirely on food.
<br>Talking about food is an effective way of developing relationships ‘woman-to-<br>woman’, and of establishing shared perceptions and experiences. Trauma and <br>nostalgia are linked in the taste buds of our grandmothers. “Traumatic” past can <br>move between generations, aka "intergenerational trauma". Potatoes have become <br>carriers of that trauma. They have to be handled delicately, with respect and care in <br>order to satisfy my grandmother's expectations. They had to be peeled paper thin, <br>so as to waste as little of the edible material as possible. If the potatoes had to be <br>cut, it was crucial to cut them into stripes in such a way that each one turns out to <br>be odd shaped and has a minimum of four corners, in order to reduce chances of <br>sticking.
<br>The following recipe is not a potato puree, it is not mashed potatoes, it is mashed <br>potatoes expanded with eggs, cheese and citrus fruits. It is a celebration of eating <br>every damn cubic millimeter of that potato. It is the taste of the trauma and <br>nostalgia of post conflict societies, in the taste buds of our grandmothers.
