A LOVE LETTER TO THE GREGGS CHICKEN BAKE

It’s been a while since I last fancied a chicken bake from Greggs. A while being a couple of months, but previous to that I hadn’t eaten one in years. In college, I would ensure I’d buy one every day, ritually at our first 11am break. I’d rope whatever friend I could convince into coming with me to the Greggs on the high street in the small town where I studied, eventually settling for going alone when my few friends got bored of the mundanity attached to watching me sloppily consume a pastry pouch filled with chicken in a cream sauce.

They say the road to love isn’t easy, and that is certainly true with both my personal relationships and the affection I feel towards the chicken bake, even now. As time has past, and I’ve had time to analyse how food and eating has a deep connection to every emotion I’ve ever felt, I have come to understand how food can be a powerful addiction, just like love. In a non-American-Pie kind of way, I would say that I grew to love this pastry, as I had discovered it at a vulnerable time in my life: Just before I got an eating disorder.

My love of food is different in many ways to my people relationships, but in lots of ways they are also similar. Turbulent is a word I very often associate with my long term romantic relationships – the few I’ve had – just like my link to food. To eat a chicken bake, for me, is to dance precariously across the edge of anxiety, knowing that if you I don’t eat it corner first, filling will splatter out onto my dress, and equally knowing that if I sucked all the filling out, I’d only be left with pastry. Nobody wants that. You might say, that the event of eating a chicken bake is like walking on eggshells, as one small move could end in disaster, but in the end, everything turns out to be okay, and I’m left full and beaming. The consistency of these mini, daily battles college I can see abstractly reflected against every relationship I have ever had, in that I find myself in a way attracted to the consistency uncertainty.

Some foods I have more chemistry with than others, and for a while the chicken bake was one of those. I’d be attracted by the creaminess of the chicken, the softness of the pastry, the fiery pepper in the sauce, the price tag, the convenience. Even though I must’ve eaten more than anyone would need in a lifetime, I’d never learn from my mistakes, biting straight into the top right corner only to pay with a sizzled tongue. As with my ex boyfriends, for example, even though I’d know I could get burned, my adoration for them was greater than my inability to heal from weekly arguments. In a way, I would say that I have sought to medicate my struggles with anxiety through both food and through the love of someone else, but each time I’d end up disappointed at neither’s ability to understand the depth of the ache in my mind. Food can make you feel good for only so long, but unless laced with antidepressants…or coming with the offer of free therapy sessions, it just didn’t mend the long term state of my mental health justice. Anxiety is something I have always battled with, and it’s lonely to do so when you seek affection from baked goods, but what I am realising is that there are people who are more able to understand than inanimate, edible objects and tunnel-visioned partners.

I’ve drifted apart from the obsession of eating Greggs chicken bake each day at 11am, since my recovery. Just like after a break up, my reliance on the comfort of this food has faded, and over time I forget the calorie counting and restriction that bubbled up alongside it. Now, I’m only left with loving memories of the taste, the warmth of when I’d finish the bake with grease on my hands and crumbs on my lips, and the courage to know I’m strong enough to fight my anxiety alone – pastry in hand or not.

Now, excuse me while I give this chicken bake a decent snogging.