Bacon Egg Sandwiches

I have never been a foodie, nor a particularly skilled or willing cook.

Words by Luka Veaney

Food has never been a motivating factor in my life. The outcome has never seemed worth the effort. I have long been a 2 minute noodle man as a result. I was never any good at food tech and home economics in school, it was never something that piqued my interest. I didn’t really have a favourite food either, it was always an awkward question to answer. I can appreciate good cooking, but great cooking, fine dining, the reinvention of food as an experience rather than sustenance has always been lost on me. It is a personal labour that I cannot understand.

Stranger still, cooking runs thick in my family. My brother works in a kitchen. My dad is a fantastic cook, and despite his ill-fated attempts to encourage me, he is an equally fantastic teacher. My grandmother spent thirty years of her life cooking for camps around Adelaide. If you attended a camp between 1968 and 2003, chances were you had eaten her food. I admire these people, because I know I could never achieve what they have, in any capacity.

What I have realised is that cooking, like most things in society, spans a spectrum. Cooking, for some, is a significant outlet for creativity and resourcefulness. I feel I land on the lesser side of the spectrum. Cooking feels laborious, mundane.

It wasn’t until recent years that I considered myself extremely lucky, grateful that I have access to food. Even the simplest of things are easy to take for granted. Food is not a privilege that is shared worldwide. Cooking, preparing a meal takes on a different definition in other countries and cultures. A rough 28% of the global population does not have regular access to sufficient food supply. While my youthful ignorance does as much as my current disappointment in universal distributive infrastructure to solve this problem, a newfound gratitude for what I am provided has granted me a more generous outlook on life. It has not, however, increased my motivation to cook.

While globally there are billions of people unsure of their next meal, hunger is a far more local problem than we realise. In January 2023 I began volunteering for a group in the city that served free breakfasts to those who wanted them. This group vied for the establishment of a safe and welcoming community, something I think everyone can appreciate. Each Saturday morning, we would serve but a few simple meals: sausages, bread and bacon egg sandwiches. It was here I would come to cherish food in a way I had not previously. There was still the effort of making the meals, but our customers were far more appreciative, far more friendly, far warmer than the audience I had cooked for prior. Each Saturday morning I witnessed the “milk of human kindness”, as Bill Shakepeare so aptly put, both in volunteers and punters alike. Kurt Vonnegut, on his prisoner-of-war experience in World War II, says “when food came in, the human beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared.”

Among the tumultuous times, the uncertain, the violent and unfortunate, human beings always have a way of seeing to it that we are each cared for, loved, protected. The effort in providing for myself pales in comparison to the satisfaction of providing for someone else. Food is, as Vonnegut says, a vehicle through which love is shared, through which differences are set aside. Those meals I had helped make, shared with strangers, people I had never met, would be the tastiest of my life.

The bacon egg sandwich became one of few beautifully simple symbols for the human condition in all its majesty and terror; it reminds me still of those wonderful sunlit mornings, working, cooking, serving something I thought worth serving. Something worth the effort.

This article was first published in Issue 2 of Empire Times.