Spaghetti Bolognese

Does food in pregnancy heal us through nostalgia?

Is it better to write less, but have said writing - be really, really good…

Or write more, with less pressure, and use the spaciousness to creatively explore.

I’m not sure.

I dance between, the internal “I’m writing way too much” and “I’m having fun and not taking life (substack) too seriously”.

This is a simple post, a short read, a few stories, a mild unpacking, a conversation starter mainly.

Enjoy… with cheese

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I’ve never eaten so much spaghetti Bolognese in my life. 

I stir the sauce around the pan while the pasta almost boils over to my right. 

Though I would happily eat it every day right now, which feels very foreign in my body after almost 7 years of being vegetarian and vegan. 

I invited animal based nourishment back into my life early 2022, and I’ve been better off for it. 

And look, I didn’t dive straight into the spaghetti Bolognese.

That arrived alongside this pregnancy. 9 weeks exactly, 

2022 had been a bit of a grieving year for me in many way. Quietly. Subtly.

Flashes of my childhood popping up in very odd moments.

I felt like I was one foot in this world, one foot in the past, simultaneously, and having an actual, visceral and lived experience of memories and present time moving at once.

I wasn’t grieving trauma,

I was grieving beauty. Freedom. *Peace* of mind. I was grieving a childhood with a happy heart, and grieving the weight of responsibility as we grow.

I was washing the dishes, as my toddler plays at my feet, and I’d get a moment of a smell that would send me into a childhood memory, perfectly preserved somewhere in my body. I want to say psyche, and though visual, these memories belonged somewhere deeper.

At 7 weeks pregnant I found myself on the lounge room floor sobbing for my childlike self. Holding her tenderly in my arms. I found myself wanting to crawl back into my memories - not because I wanted to escape my current world, but because I tried to rush out of childhood so quickly, that I actually think it felt jarring on my body. Now I wanted back in. Of course, with my second baby in my womb.

At 9 weeks. The spaghetti arrived.

I was sitting in a tiny airbnb apartment by the ocean, with cabin fever as my energetic toddler was doing zoomies. The nausea arrived in waves. 

I was contemplating the lack of sleep I had had the night before. We had been attempting (for maybe the 3rd time?) to night wean, though the simple fact I could hear the man above us sneezing, and music from a couple doors down, a screaming toddler would likely be not ideal for anyone in the complex at 3am, so we shelved weaning for another day, and I fed him most of the night with sore, early pregnancy nipples. 

We decided to go for a walk by the ocean. We were only staying at this airbnb for a couple nights, and just didn’t anticipate how small it would all feel. 

As we were walking I got a pang of hunger. 

My mouth salivating. 

Spaghetti. 

I need it.
Immediately.
Great, Italian, red saucy spaghetti. 

We got back to the apartment and uber eats an order from a local Italian place. 

It hit every spot I didn’t know I had. 

Since then, my answer has been YES to any offer of spaghetti Bolognese since. 

Except for once. 

Tul made it for me when I was about 20 weeks, and I wanted to cry. I wanted it so badly, but so specifically. The sauce had to be just right, red and thick all over the pasta. It wasn’t. He opted for a beef liver infused mince to try and stack the nutrients (If that doesn’t represent his practicality I don’t know what will).  I struggled with the gratitude and let me hormones take me into an inner tantrum of “How dare this spaghetti be not exactly what I thought it would be.”

I even googled images to show him what it should be like…which, I struggled to find actual examples other than the occasional magazine cover of perfection likely 6 perfectly lit photos photoshopped together. Damn marketing got me and my hormones good. 

I’ll have you know this essay, isn’t entirely about spaghetti and my love affair. 

Even though at 40 weeks I’ll happily say yes to it for the 3rd time in the last 4 days… 

At this rate I literally eat spaghetti more than I have sex, and, I’m okay with it.

But moreso, what is it about the spaghetti….

Growing up, I was the eldest of 7 kids. 

We started on a lush green little hobby farm hidden in the valley. Most homesteaders instagram dreams these days. 

Mine too, honestly. 

Though back then, in the late 90’s and early 2000’s my dad just wanted to grow and sell organic mandarins, and breed purebred dorper sheep. 

I spent the formative years of my life, mostly naked, mostly covered in mud, surrounded by pet geese, ducks, chickens, pigs, rats, mice, guineapigs, rabbits, and more. 

We ate from our home orchard, Dad would teach at the local school and pick fruit from the main orchard before and after. 

Mum would teach art at the school as relief (One of the most creative women I know). 

We spent a lot of time as kids bored, and then forced into creativity. 

Bonfires in the paddocks over winter have anchored the smell of burning wood on a crisp evening into my psyche and body as one of the most calming smells of my life. 

My dad, he made spaghetti. 

Not true, Italian style. 

Moreso… the sort you’d expect from a young man who learned from his mum as he was off to teachers collage so he wouldn’t starve… 

And then, once he had kids, It was one of the “easy meals”. 

For my childhood, it was joy, and rooted my feet to the place I grew up. The memories of family and connection and my dad in the kitchen rather than out in the orchard. 

The memories are hugged by the hot water running out, and needing to cold nudie run from the shower that was missing tiles, down the hallway, get straight into flannelette PJ’s by the fire and eagerly await our hot chocolate, in (definitely not BPA Free) plastic cups. 

The spaghetti - Reminds me of my dad. 

Of my childhood. 

And I find it so fascinating, that I’m not the only one who begins to crave childhood nostalgia as food during the time of incubating our very own children. 

In my pregnancy with Rafi, it was salad sandwiches. Or sometimes Vegemite and cheese (I do understand, this is likely a very Australian thing). 

Honey and cheese too…. I don’t think that’s even Australian though. 

I craved cereal that I hadn’t eaten in almost 18 years at that point. 

This pregnancy, it’s spaghetti and also…. chocolate muffins… which take me back to the tiny ration of a quarter slice of chocolate muffin we’d pull out of the freezer covered in glad wrap, and place in our lunch boxes each day, hoping it would be defrosted by lunch. (Thanks mum) 

I wonder if eating the nostalgic cravings, offer some sort of healing for us, as we learn to parent ourselves and make space for a child in our lives. 

I wonder if it’s what my dad ate as a child, and his mum, and hers. 

Food being passed down like intergenerational trauma, and intergenerational gifts… but possibly with the intention of healing and creating cosy nostalgia for us to have micro moments of remembrance in? 

I’d love to know what your pondering on this is. 

I know I’m not the only one who’s let the cravings of childhood cuddle me to sleep at night. 

What’s yours? 

And what are your thoughts on why we seek that comfort during pregnancy? 

Kat