Jeevan moved quickly through the store while Hua spoke. Another case of water – Jeevan was under the impression that one can never have too much – and then cans and cans of food, all the tuna and beans and soup on the shelf, pasta, anything that looked like it might last a while.
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
At the end of the world, even when all else is lost, we can’t avoid the imperative to eat. In all my favourite dystopian fiction, there is a strong focus placed on food. The Man and his Son spend their journey down The Road pulling open cupboards in abandoned houses, searching for tins. When Jeevan is warned about the Georgia flu outbreak out in Station Eleven, his first trip is to the supermarket to stock up on as many trollies full of food as will fit in his car. Food is also key in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Only the worst is available under the new regime: Winston’s hallway smells of boiled cabbage, and the gin is synthetic and barely palatable. When he and Julia meet above the antique shop, she brings contraband with her – sugar, proper bread, jam, milk and real coffee. The food in dystopian fiction, so often found only in tins, is rarely this appetizing – it’s necessary, but not desirable.
Happily, this bleak culinary landscape is not at all my experience of eating from tins. With the right ones in your cupboard – beans (baked and otherwise), various fish, tomatoes, coconut and condensed milks – you’ll be able to rustle up something great without leaving the house. I appreciate their relaxed ease, the way that they sit quietly in the kitchen until I can make use of them, happily travelling with me from house to house, and finding a home on new shelves. I love the bright and jolly designs on my collection of sardine tins – ones that hail from Portugal, and Italy – offering some colour and light on a grey October day.
Perhaps it’s the catastrophizer in me – the tendency I have to imagine all the worst possible outcomes – that means the apocalyptic stories have always had an enormous impact. Whatever happens, I feel reassured that I can visualize the weeks of meals we could subsist on if I needed to make sole use of my store cupboard. And, while we anticipate the coming apocalypse, my tins wait patiently, ready to help when I want something nice and easy for supper.