Why did Louise stop writing?

WTF Do I Eat Tonight? a daily solution to an eternal problem

It's a website - WTF Do I Eat Tonight? - now apparently dead. Which is very sad, because it's the kind of website I like to read. Not that I do of course, unless I come across a post here and there. And, because, I think this one, though much more popular than mine, nevertheless was tucked away in an internet corner. It rarely pops up in any of my searches. Actually if it wasn't dead I would subscribe to this one I think.

The author is Louise - and here she is on her About Me page, telling us that she is in Paris in 2012, but she doesn't tell us much more:

"I’m a freelance editor who works mostly on food and drink books. I live in London, love my vintage Beetle, my cats, and singing. Oh and cooking. I’m quite fond of cooking."

So I tried to find out more but after a couple of Google pages was getting nowhere, until - now almost inevitably - I realised that their AI had the answer - Louise Tucker. However, and here's an interesting thing - I just asked again and AI has forgotten. Now it is telling me that the author is anonymous - well initially, something along the lines of more or less anonymous, but now anonymous. How does that work?

When AI thought she was anonymous it also added that she worked in publishing in London. So I searched some more and found this Louise Tucker (there are others) who has written a novel which won the Cheshire novel prize and is on the shortlist for the Penguin Michael Joseph Undiscovered Writers Prize. The novel is called The Last Gift of Emmeline Davis, but I don't think it's been published as yet.

I think this might be the same lady because the Cheshire prize page says:

"She lives in London with her husband, and dreams of escaping to a) Northumberland b) France c) Estonia (long story). When she’s not writing, she’s singing in a choir, driving a 1973 VW Beetle to Greece and making ginger cake. Not all at the same time…"

Which sounds remarkably like the words on her About Me page. So yes, I think this is her. And she looks like a slightly older version of the 2012 one.

It also probably explains why she gave up the blog. Her last post is Meera Sodha's butter paneer masala shown here in The Guardian version. Louise simply has a narrow banner version.

This post was published on November 5th 2020 - during the COVID lockdown, and in her introduction to the recipe she says:

"this time, I am going to share as many of the recipes I cooked on repeat over the past eight months. Tepsi kebap, caramel chicken, dhal makhani, ramen eggs, sausages baked with red peppers and onions, sage and lemon pork pie…the great thing about being a recipe addict is that there is always just one more wafer to cook. Here’s the first: Meera Sodha’s paneer butter masala."

'Here's the first" - which surely implies there is more to come, but there are none. Maybe the answer why comes from earlier in that paragraph:

"At the start of the last lockdown I was convinced that I’d have tons of time to share recipes, especially ones that were helpful. It is, after all, the whole purpose of this blog and always has been: finding a solution to that eternal question…But then we were locked up good and proper, 16 weeks inside in the end, thanks to my beloved being classified as vulnerable and, you know what, I couldn’t concentrate on a bloody thing."

That Cheshire Prize write-up states that:

"She has just completed the MA in Prose Fiction at UEA, where she was awarded the 21-22 Annabel Abbs Scholarship."

UEA is the University of East Anglia, and elsewhere in the interview she tells us that she started another novel whilst doing the MA, so maybe she dropped the blog in favour of writing novels as well as working in publishing and possibly caring for her 'vulnerable' beloved/husband.

Enough of Louise - other than to wish her well - on to the blog itself.

In her very first post - May 1 2011 - she tells us why she began to write the blog after seeing a tired woman shopping in a supermaket at the end of a working day, saying to her friend how she did not look forward to cooking and would probably get takeaway:

"I knew exactly how she felt. Although I’m an avid cook and foodie, after an hour’s commute, and a nine-hour day, I never feel particularly inspired to cook anything interesting. And, despite owning shelves of cookery books, when I’m standing in the supermarket I usually feel spoilt for choice but short of imagination. So I decided to create a site where I can always find a recipe, or at least an idea, for everyday Monday-to-Friday food. From now on, I’m going to post a recipe five days a week so that, by May 2012, I’ll have one for every working day of the year. Whether mine or someone else’s, they will be recipes that are simple, seasonal and fast, use easy-to-find ingredients and use as few as possible because if I wanted to practise heavy lifting on the way home I’d go to a gym. Hopefully, I can save a few people from that moment of existential crisis in an aisle full of dismembered animals. If not, well the golden arches await."

It's the kind of writing that draws me to a blog or to a cookbook writer. Personal anecdotes, amusing statements about life, the universe and everything, rather than the boring platitudes or nothing other than instructions - or - in the very worst cases, just a recipe. And her aims are similar to mine.

Mind you - before I entirely leave Louise and her writings - later in my explorations I found that she had had a previous blog called Chop, stir, grate which she began in 2010 with these words:

"I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time. I have favourite recipes on bits of paper, in the back of diaries, in my head and in cook books and, since I’m not the most organised and don’t have the best memory, I want to put them all in one place. And, it seems to me, that the ether of the internet is the best place."

It lasted a year and is really much the same as the second version.

You've probably had enough of Louise by now, and realised that I see in her a younger version of myself in some ways. And rather better written too. So I will leave you with one more random recipe - one of Rachel Roddy's, in a post dated November 5 2020 - she likes the same cooks as I as well - The summer wardrobe: Rachel Roddy's green beans (no ham), which begins with this:

"The fashionista’s greatest joy, it always seems to me, is an outfit that can be up-and- downgraded; ‘for day and night’, I think is the phrase. I have never understood this concept with clothes (do people really change at the end of the day, after work, to go out in the evening, unless there’s a dress code?) but I do see its value in food."

A lead in to how this is a recipe that can be fiddled with according to the occasion for which it is intended.

I do hope that her novel does get published. I will look out for it.

YEARS GONE BY

July 30

2025 - Nothing

2024 - The most wonderful book

2023 - #girl dinner

2022 - Crumbs

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing

2019 - Nothing

2018 - What did we do before Trip Advisor?

2017 - The vanishing dinner party

2016 - Weeds