Girl Dinner ft. Eli Davies

What’s for dinner? A handful of grated cheese? Some olives and a croissant? A whole crab, eaten in bed? This one goes out to all the exhausted girlies who can’t be arsed to cook. What wonders emerge when women find moments of freedom from compulsory and unpaid domestic labour? Ladies, gentlemen and nonbinary pals, welcome to the cursed/blessed super-trend that was, and is, GIRL DINNER.

This week Dan and Kasia are joined by a very special guest, writer and academic Eli Davies, whose authorial debut The Spinster Cookbook is published today! Together we ask: is ‘girl dinner’ infantilising, or a moment of feminist liberation? How do people eat differently when their lives are affected by chaos, stress and being a bit ‘goblin-like’ – and why might Girl Dinner offer a relief, and comfort, when life feels unrelenting? And how does it intersect with gendered notions of ‘what women should eat’ – are women still performing a role in service of patriarchy if there are just a few chaotic scraps on the plate, and no protein? We talk about the meaning of the word 'spinster' - and why Eli thinks it is preferable to ‘single’. And ask the vital question: was the Ploughman’s Lunch the original girl dinner?

Also: “What about ‘mum dinner’?”, as Laura Thomas asked in a recent essay?

Buy THE SPINSTER COOKBOOK: Culture, Politics and Pleasure in the Single Woman’s Kitchen – which is OUT NOW.

It’s a book which draws on Bridget Jones, Annie Ernaux, Sex and the City and Doris Lessing with equal enthusiasm, along with Nigel and Nigella, Delia and Jamie. And we love it.

Also do subscribe to Eli’s Substack!

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