Instagram story viewer> @malouherkes> Posts

Malou Herkes

@malouherkes

2.3K

followers

1926

following

Writer + editor | Writing on:
✍️The Forgotten Pantry: food, frugality + folklore
✍️ In Colour: making ink, exploring colour 👇

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Mexico Mornings ☀️ In frame:

Braulia making a stack of tortillas to sell.

Braulia herself surrounded by magic mushrooms, a mural painted in psychedelic colours. For medicine, she says.

Water butts line the wall, each with a bowl to scoop out water. To wash dishes and tired faces.

Notice the sheets of red plastic so the tortilla dough doesn't stick to the press? Braulia habitually loops the top one into a small handle between each pressing.

You'll come back one day, she's saying.

Abrasive cockerel 🐓

#theforgottenpantry
#foodfrugalityfolklore
#mexicancooking
#Mexico
#Oaxaca taken in Mexico by @malouherkes

79

10

4 years ago

💌 Latest post up at link in bio 💌 Those empty liminal hours were once the most terrifying,

when the darkness held the days apart only with difficulty,

when the spaces between dream and reality were hard and brittle.

I spent them stalking the kitchen in pursuit of alternative nourishment.

I’d put the kettle on, burn a crumpet, eat cereal.

Sometimes, I stood at the hob, eyes shuttered, stirring soup,

thinking of the woman in Tokyo who kept the rice cooker on 24/7

just in case the walls came down.

She knew how to wield her own powers of transformation,

prodding, pounding, reshaping her world into something more acceptable to her,

something more nourishing.

Perhaps this was her way to acknowledge the precarity of her home,

to concede this space on her own terms.

Read it on #Substack at link upstairs 👆☺️

#theforgottenpantry
#foodfrugalityfolklore
#substackwriter
#substacknewsletter
#insomnia taken in Wales by @malouherkes

29

3

4 years ago

50 years. In 1975, my mum arrived in London on a train from France, running from home as fast as she could. As it happened, she met my dad at Victoria station, where he was flyering promo for the hostel that my mum was due to be a cleaner at. On the day of the anniversary, my dad's partner, Jane, drove mum to hospital for a cataract operation. Time moves on, life goes round.

Every time i go to mum's house, the traces of her resourcefulness are everywhere, an engrained frugality that shows me there is more to life than the wheels of consumption I trundle around on. This is a home she has created. For herself, yes but mostly too for her plants, the birds who pass through, and the neighbours cat who eventually never left.

Featured:

- sauerkraut in jars (not preserved figs)

- Spatula for everything

- a flower basket turned upside down so the robins can eat their food without the blackbirds muscling in

- No-slide soap. Stick a beer cap into it to keep it from sliding around

- Leftover rice starch, drunk straight. For gut health apparently, so says my grandmother.

- Yoghurt tubs of chicken stock

- empty toilet perfume spray, finished, then topped up with vodka to use the remaining smell

- washing up liquid, bought in bulk and decanted for me whenever i visit

- Homemade yoghurt by @malouherkes

113

12

a year ago

The story of a dead garden. Then and now.

In June last year, I moved into this house with a garden, in which nothing grew. Not a weed! Sitting in it felt like being inside - nothing moved. Just plastic grass and weedkiller. Still, in our first week, a strawberry plant poked its head through the fence, a hopeful reminder that life resists and persists regardless.

I didn't know then that under plastic grass is a very thick layer of heavy heavy gravel. It took a lot of digging, we put in the first plant - a white rose - from my mum's friends garden in the gower, and lots more after that. We made veg beds from old floorboards and planted tomatoes and courgettes. Fast forward a year and half the garden is still under gravel but the rest of it is alive. The hollyhocks have gone bananas, the courgette flowers are big, the poppies have seeded themselves everywhere and the spinach has bolted. Its amazing.

I have never tended a garden before, I've never grown veg or composted my food, or grown flowers that bees love. It always felt like a dream, all too unattainable. But somehow I've become someone who thinks it's OK to send a minute-long video of the bees rolling around in the poppies. I even zoom in while the video is going, like my dad would do. I love it so much, im sharing it here with you too. Enjoy! X by @malouherkes

727

67

a year ago

This world is just a little place, just the red in the sky, before the sun rises, so let us keep fast hold of hands, that when the birds begin, none of us be missing.
- Emily Dickinson

My parents' gardens, Wales. The only home there is x taken in Bannau Brycheiniog - Brecon Beacons - National Park by @malouherkes

75

14

a year ago

On how to make spreadable butter...

Always a new frugal idea when mum's around. This time, how to make spreadable butter and why it's far more cost effective. Thanks @ducheminjoelle, I know you hate that I still won't switch from normal butter but its still a good idea 😅 taken in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire by @malouherkes

30

4

a year ago

Kerala, India. Featuring...

forest mutton butcher at the end of the world • coffee beans harvested • kappa tapioca grown by Gigi • jackfruit tree in Varsala's garden cut back for fear of trampling elephants • coconuts to market • byriani • pomelos the size of my head • big trees • green chutney topped with tempered curry leaves, mustard seeds, chilli and urad dal (the best) • egg bhajis • taken in Kerala, India by @malouherkes

48

8

2 years ago

WoOops glitchy pics, while cooking in Kerala (and Kanartaka) and drinking all the masala chai, thanks to the incredible Varsala and Grigia. Such hospitality and generosity 💚

Where cashew nuts, coconuts (so many), jackfruit and nutmeg grow on trees, and most meals start with popping mustard seeds in coconut oil. I shouldn't be so surprised how strongly Kerala's spices taste of themselves, and how little you need to use compared to those we get in UK. There's cardamom and cloves, cinnamon and black pepper and chilli, curry leaves and nutmeg, mace and star anise. And tamarind and fruit trees, coffee plants and rice paddies everywhere....

Pictured in the making: mutton biryani, dosa, green chutney, paneer burji, and all the fish curries. by @malouherkes

71

6

2 years ago

B L A C K P E P P E R

First time for me seeing black pepper growing on crawling vines, planted beneath trees so they circle up their trunks.

In Malayalam, they are called kurumulaku which im told literally translates to 'round spice', and it is used as exactly that, a spice in its own right, used as a base spice in curries for example (see the incredibly delicious creamy peppery prawn curry on vid 3). Nothing like how europeans crack it on at the end as an afterthought.

I never realised black pepper was native to Kerala either. It was from here that centuries ago, spice traders came to exchange gold and perfumes for black pepper. So strange to think of this specific spice becoming so popular and so ubiquitous in so many places as far back as 2000 years ago. Its popularity attracted colonisers, like the portuguese and british later too.

I now have a big zip lock bag of the stuff, grown by Varsala in her garden. She keeps the lot in a big tote bag, after drying the red berries on her terrace until black and dry.

Thank you Moulya @not.mo_x for taking me round your dad's farm and showing me how it's grown 💚

#blackpepper
#kerala taken in Kerala, India by @malouherkes

27

2

2 years ago

Autumn in Gower 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

The season's colours translate themselves everywhere. Feat: Chestnut flour pancakes, rusted inks, fallen alder trees and blackcurrant vinegar dressings, and Esther Kinsky's River (my all time favourite book) on pic 3.

Also, Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand (translated from hindi) a great read 💚

Thank you as ever @mickischloessingk x taken in Gower, Wales by @malouherkes

63

1

2 years ago

Another year, another diary finished. Had a lot of fun with this one, discovering ink and the stories that emerge with the making of it. A collage of things, an archive of non events, a rambling journal ✨️

Also, I love these notebooks made by @pithsupply. Really beautifully made and thoughtfully designed x taken in Bristol, United Kingdom by @malouherkes

62

14

2 years ago

Food things recently ish...

Bringing back coffee table Sundays. Trout tagliatelle with wild cornish samphire and all the extras w/ @clare.knivett @darsex101

British Library Food Season. This was a couple months ago but has stayed with me. Andy Swinscoe @thecourtyarddairy an incredible spokeperson for why we need to keep raw milk cheesemaking alive. Yes!

Turned 37 and couldnt resist 🥳 (hoping my IG aunts don't see this)

Moved house. Ate spag bol on a questionable carpet, and then cauliflower lasagne on a questionable lawn. Both very good. Might need some furniture soon...

I've been doing some marketing stuff for a local seafood business and am so amazed to hear from customers what they buy and cook on the regular. They're mostly over 60 and cook things like casual eel salads on a weds night. Direct quote from one lady: 'My grandkids love Nanas red sauce. It's a sauce I make with the hake. They're vegetarian but I sneak chorizo in and they never complain' 🤔

Freelancing at @JamieOliver HQ for a little while and the lunches are 👌 Just a venison ragu plz.

Went to paris, got food poisoning and could only eat fromage frais for days. These little pots are pure nostalgia

London solo @campaniaandjones with Carmen Maria Machado's In The Dreamhouse. v much recommend her writing!

Love thick noodles @biangbiangfreshnoodle in east London xx by @malouherkes

64

16

2 years ago