Dawn O’Porter

Yeah, so it's all of those things.

So I lost my mum when I was six.

And...

in a house full of sad adults when food was on the table, everything was okay.

It was just this huge distraction.

And I think as a child, I latched onto it and I was just like, this is the thing that

will make everyone okay and make everyone happy.

So I would just long for food times, for meal times.

And then I used it as my comfort as well when I was on my own.

It was just always the thing that made me feel better.

Sometimes not in a particularly healthy way, but always as a way to just make myself feel good.

And so I thought when I started to write Hungry Eyes,

I didn't mean to write a memoir.

I was gonna write similar to what Jen wrote, 12 moments, 12 themes from my life and the food that kind of marks that moment.

And it ended up being more of a memoir of going right back and just looking at my relationship with food and the people who have come to the table and where I was at that point in my life and what we were eating and the moments that you meet people and these relationships

And so that's kind of what the chapters look like.

And then there is a recipe at the end of each one.

It's when you look at your life through the lens of food, you realize, I don't know, it's just such a great way to see where you were at at different times, especially as a woman, the different ways that you treat your body at different times in your life, your self-esteem, pregnancy, motherhood, socially.

all of that stuff is played out in the food that you're eating at the time.

So it's really, I would say to anybody, it's such a good exercise in getting to know yourself, to look back on your relationship with what you've eaten.