Scroll through social media these days, and you can easily get hit with a wave of overwhelming expectations around what you should be eating, how much you should be eating, how meals should be plated and styled perfectly for internet audiences, all while trying to make a living and stay afloat. But what happens if we pause from these narratives, and reframe our cooking experiences? Today’s guest, Sonali Menezes, explores just that with me today.
Sonali is an artist, zinester, and writer. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario with her husband, cat, and houseplants. She loves food, and eats it every day in celebration. Her first book, Depression Cooking: Feeding Yourself When It All Feels Too Hard, is out officially as of today through ECW Press.
In today’s conversation, Sonali explores what it means to depression cook and how she structures her recipes to maintain accessibility for those navigating mental health, disabilities, and challenging phases of life, how messages around appetite and hunger in her younger years living in Scarborough and North York informed her anti-diet and approachable writing and recipe-crafting, how the art world she came up in understands eating (or not eating) and its relationship to her illustrations, and establishing gentler relationships with eating and cooking.
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Instagram: @sonaleeeeeee