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That experience shows, even in the food he makes today: one picture he sends me is of a spiced apple jalousie with shatteringly thin, flaky pastry; another is a pork and root vegetable terrine alongside bright beetroot and a puree of parsnip. Knives are sharpened, oil crackles, dishes are rushed out to hungry eaters. How to use vittles in a sentence. He has picked up plenty of skills over the years, making a top-class spaghetti bolognese and even (not too successfully) trying to introduce Nigerian food to some of the people he cares for. But in his role as a support worker over the last six years, working for a large care provider with homes across London, he has found himself thrust into duties that he never expected. Southern. Would I leave my career?”I ask whether it’ll be a big change from the cooking and the caring – making shepherds pie, chaperoning, boiling pasta, spending lazy afternoons hanging out with the people he supports – that he’s been doing over the last few years.

It actually comes from Middle English, by way of French.Vittles is actually a shortened and simplified spelling of the Middle English word The word vitailles was in use when it was discovered that the original origin of the word was the Latin word Vittles actually remained the most common use of the term, but the confused etymology caused many to think that vittles, all along, had been a misspelling and mispronunciation of victuals, which is pronounced without the ‘C’ as VIH-tuhl.This practice of attempting to refine English by aligning words with their supposed Latin etymons is actually fairly common, and is yet another way that English spelling can be so confusing, as unnecessary letters are added to “Latinize” English words.Just for curiosity’s sake, here is a list of other words that were Latinized. These kitchen spaces, in which the mechanisms of the market are felt less keenly – where cooks cook in order to please and to feed, rather than to upsell, edify or impress – tend to go unnoticed when we discuss  hospitality, kitchen innovation, food culture and ethics. “It's a little bit scary, but at the end of the day if I was already at work and the same thing erupted while I was there, what would I do? That “African food” still exists in the UK as a cover-all descriptor for the gastronomy of a continent spanning more than 54 countries, 1.2 billion people and countless different foods, is telling.

But determined not to let the occasion go unobserved, Niamh – the nursing home’s cook – consulted with the couple’s daughter and devised that preposterous cake.“There’s a sombre atmosphere in the home for sure,” she tells me over the phone, “but the cooking is still fun – as much as it can be under the circumstances.” For this special cake, Niamh had to create something that Ann would be able to chew and swallow, but that would still be grand enough to mark a golden wedding anniversary.

It’s a responsibility that calls for in-depth training and close relationships with the people who are being fed – not, as Robert points out, ad hoc solutions from overwhelmed agency workers. But it is in precisely these blurred spaces, one person’s home and another’s workplace, where some of the knottiest issues in our food systems are worked out.With so much of our food media falling roughly under the umbrella of service journalism there is little room left for discussion of institutional cooking.

We need to chip away at our calcified biases, consciously and carefully re-centering those culinary spaces that have been sidelined.

To find out more, read our “One of my biggest personal challenges has been adapting my cooking style to a residential nursing setting: making a pureed diet look appetising, maintaining residents’ dignity and not singling them out as different because of their dietary needs.”Ordinarily, Del’s team of eight chefs would cater to home’s residents across three dining rooms and a cafe: convivial spaces where residents and their guests could eat from a daily changing menu, have grilled kippers to order, pick up a cake or a coffee and catch up with friends.

Here are some other examples:All content © 2019 by Eric Troy and CulinaryLore.