A love letter to beige foods, and to the journey of being autistic.
I honour my journey through discovering I was autistic and to unmasking through my relationship with foods (mostly potatoes).
Content warnings: this essay discusses food and sensory issues in depth, with some mention of weight (no numbers). Please honour your own needs when deciding to read on.
There had always been the implication I was picky.
Living in our Bristol house, all I was really known for eating was chicken nuggets and “cheesy bean tatie” (jacket potatoes with cheese and beans, if you can’t interpret toddler).
We moved to Birmingham when I was three, with my stepdad and late stepnan. Most of our dinners were meat, potatoes, and 2 veg. I liked roast potatoes much better than mash, the texture made me squirm. I didn’t mind peas and sweetcorn, but carrots were much harder to deal with; chew, chew, chew, hopefully eventually swallow.
It was often the case that I took so long, the number of people at the table dwindled. I was meant to finish my plate, and if it was a special day with Yorkshire puddings, I wasn’t allowed those until my vegetables were eaten. So, I would sit, solitary, determined to get to eat the two remaining, perfectly risen Yorkshire puddings that were left in the middle of the table.
At school, I would eat my packed lunches, carefully chosen crackers - not sandwiches, most of the time, and when there were, no butter - crisps, a yoghurt, a chocolate biscuit. My favourites of the time were Penguins, Clubs and Viscounts. Mint chocolate has always been my first choice. My mum’s too.
We have always been two peas in a pod. Ironic, considering neither of us really like peas that much. But to put it simply, we came as a package deal - and my stepdad accepted me with just as open arms. And we’ve always stayed that way. She is my advocate and sounding board in a way I will never take for granted.
Anyway, I digress. I would get to eat my packed lunches outside in the summer - my preference, because all the noises dissipated more. The dining hall meant a cacophony of pans, plates scraping, cutlery being chucked into the washing up trays, all alongside the noises of people eating, a variety of smells, and excitable voices. Wherever I sat, I was always last at the table or on the picnic benches, a dinner lady huffing slightly in my direction.
Now, for being two peas in a pod, one thing my mum often didn’t know was when I had gone off a food or didn’t want to tell her I didn’t like it. I would swap it for something, give it away, chuck it in a bin when I could get away with it, until I eventually plucked up the courage to tell her I didn’t want it anyway. Sometimes it was the smell, but more often it was a texture.
Pizza was safe. Sometimes I got it cold in my packed lunch the day after we got a night off from meat & 2 veg. Sausage rolls, when mum got them, were good too, most of the time.
At home, I just wanted to stick with chicken nuggets, baked potatoes, pizza and various forms of frozen potatoes. Potatoes, I wasn’t so fussy about. Chips, wedges, curly fries, french fries, waffles, smilies.
Eventually, my stepnan relented on four out of seven days including slightly dry roast meat, watery carrots and slightly-wallpaper tasting mash. We moved to just one weekday of that, plus the much more lovingly cooked Sunday roast (with, of course, the famous Yorkshire puddings). Our family had grown by then. I had a brother, and maybe I already had a sister.
When I visited what I supposed was my other household, of my dad and grandparents, I bonded with my dad over crumpets with cheese and ham at midnight. One day in each week I was with them, on a day my dad had off from work, we’d go into the local shopping centre and go to Pizza Hut.
Pizza was safe. I could do pizza. The ice cream machine was worth the stilted conversations and trying not to get any tomato sauce down the special clothes I had for wearing out with them.
I stopped going there at twelve.
My first secondary school was a grammar school where I didn’t quite fit. The main menu changed every day, but my meal didn’t, if I was on a day where I was having dinners. I had two set meals, where I had a script of exactly what to say and knew I wouldn’t be caught out by not knowing the prices and facing the embarrassment of not having enough money on my card.
One day a week, a sausage roll, with beans. On a Friday, pizza with wedges. I had learnt to hack my sensory needs when I didn’t even know what that meant yet, because on those two days, I had an “early lunch” pass so I could get to my lunchtime clubs on time. You’d breeze by the queue of whichever year was first that day, into an empty hall that was only half filled by the time you had given yourself indigestion ready to dash off to debating (or netball, or librarian duty, or French).
When I moved to my second secondary school, six months before I was admitted to a psychiatric unit and four months after my first panic attack, I was too scared to try out the new systems, so I didn’t. Sausage roll or leftover pizza, chicken bites, crisps, chocolate biscuit.
The certainty of knowing what was in my lunchbox eased the sensory hell that was the main hall. At this school, we had split lunch, so only two year groups ate at the same time; packed lunches in the main hall, dinners in the dining hall. I couldn’t adjust it for myself like I had elsewhere. I had a lot of what we can now call meltdowns at lunchtimes. The teachers let my friends stay with me, who, somehow had more knowledge than the entire senior leadership team about what to do with me. Until the time they didn’t, and the whole world came crashing down.
December 2015 bought my psychiatric admission. With it, came searching for survival in more way than one.
The menus would come around every evening, sat in the little communal area of three sofas. I would normally be colouring or reading a book (quite often one the staff weren’t quite sure they approved of, but didn’t seem to think was worth taking off me). I’d scan the sheet, but I almost always knew what I was doing to end up with.
NAME: CHARLI
LUNCH CHOICE: Jacket potato with cheese and beans
DINNER CHOICE: Jacket potato with butter (please, no tuna mayo)
Sometimes those switched, but it was always the same thing - if the offered topping wasn’t beans, that was the end of it. Plain jacket potato for one. Occasionally, maybe once a week, there would be toasties for one meal, or something like sausage and mash. The other meal would still be a jacket, but those days were ones I slid my tray off the stack with more spring in my step.
Most staff didn’t notice. Those who did, made a joke of it. No-one considered the fact this perhaps wasn’t very nutritional, and maybe a patient who was desperately trying to engage in therapy and their education needed more than a potato that arrived with not even garnish on the plate (not that I’d have eaten it, mind).
I was halfway through my autism diagnostic assessments and rapidly learning more about my needs, but it didn’t seem to be a concern to them. I put on a lot of weight those few months, because I would order the bread roll on offer with the soup and the two scoops of ice cream, to subsidise the lack of a main course. So, it wasn’t something they seemed to be fussed about.
It was a tradition that when you left, you pressed your handprint onto the wall with your name and a few quotes or things associated with you. As I sat writing or reading in the communal area, every single day, I would scan my eyes over the handprints and imagine myself stood, placing my hand on the wall, ready to go home.
And that’s what I did. A purple handprint, with the words:
“CHARLI CLEMENT. Jacket potatoes & tangles.”
Just before I started my A Levels, I decided to go vegetarian. I was going to do it slowly, but I’m an “all or nothing” kind of autistic, so the day I decided to cut out pork, it turned out I just wouldn’t eat meat again.
It turned out that was all well and good at home, where I could experiment with Quorn products & dry Linda McCartney sausages (there weren’t quite so many brands then) and eat safe foods and leave behind whatever didn’t work.
It didn’t work quite so well for parties or restaurants, that had already been a minefield where 9/10 times I chose chicken nuggets. It was okay, I’d tell everyone. I already ate at home! I’m not hungry! I’ll eat later!
Whatever worked.
“How can you be a vegetarian that, like, doesn’t eat vegetables?” some would laugh.
I’d shrug, awkwardly. “Pizza and pasta, mostly.”
When I moved to university, I quickly became best friends with one of the girls in my flat and someone from the flat above (our Freshers reps had stuck us together because they were a couple). I ate more different foods in my time as a Fresher than ever, because we cooked together and they adapted the meals for me. We’d unload our big shops in the kitchen one day a week after painstakingly planning the week.
The days I didn’t like whatever they were having, I’d just cook a plainer version or do my own thing. I didn’t mind, even though they’d say they felt bad for leaving me out. It meant I got a day of complete safety and certainty, a welcome sensory break and something that made me feel settled.
I lived in the same room for both my first and second year. My flatmates changed, as those from my first year moved into the house I had originally signed onto but had decided was too risky for my health (it turned out not to matter in a pandemic where you didn’t need to commute). My new flatmates were good too, though I faced a few comments about the sameness of my meals.
“It’s just part of the autism,” I’d say over my pesto pasta or yet another oven pizza. “I have a lot of sensory issues with food.”
Being able to explain it - and feeling comfortable to openly express it with an ease as if I’d just said “I study Politics” - made me feel a lightness and a confidence I’d not had before.
I eat more vegetables now than I ever have, but I don’t feel particularly proud of it.
Why should I? My diet has always been about meeting my needs - and I’ll be proud of that, no matter how beige a plate has to look.