Reply To: TBC: What role do the recipes and food shared in the Briar Club play among the women and within the story?
“Maybe that was the other side effect of having survived starvation: it left you wanting to feed people, feed everyone, feed them and fix them. She [Grace] hadn’t even realized it was what she was craving, back when she walked into a houseful of people sho had nothing in common but an address, but who all needed feeding and fixing.”
It’s so much easier to get strangers to open up and talk with each other when they are participating in some kind of activity vs sitting around a room looking at each other. The act of gathering together to eat opens doorways to conversations. We talk about how recipes are prepared, we talk about who the recipe is from. It gives each of the residents a way to begin fixing each other while at the same time fixing themselves. Food not only nourishes the body but it nourishes friendships as people gather around the table and share life giving sustenance. Food was the invitation that brought the otherwise isolated inhabitants of the Briarwood House together. It was the thread that stitched together the patches representing each person into a warm and comforting quilt of friendship.
