Food For Your Soul

Food for Your Soul

Dr Jessie Goldberg, an emergency medicine registrar working at Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, shares her thoughts with Dr Ashna Basu about the role food plays in her wellbeing.

BORN AND RAISED in a family that cherishes food, Dr Jessie Goldberg’s life has been a journey of discovering different meals and flavours, and the joy they can bring. Growing up, family and food were indistinguishable – one was never without the other. Her mother, Lisa Goldberg, who is a cookbook author, would welcome Jessie home each day after school with treats to try and critique. She describes coming home to what would be my personal paradise – a line-up of chocolate cakes waiting for her feedback. Jessie even has a recipe featured in one of her mother’s books, Now for Something Sweet (I cannot recommend the book highly enough, it’s my go-to cookbook for delicious baked goods).

For Jessie, food represents care, comfort, and culture – from Shabbat dinners to Jewish cultural festivals throughout the year. To her, food has always been more than just sustenance. It’s an expression of her identity and a way to share her culture with those around her, and to learn from them in return. Food offers another dimension to understand the people around us, and the flavours that have shaped them. She shares a phrase by Jewish comedian and satirist, Alan King, “A summary of every Jewish holiday: They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!” In the face of adversity, food can serve as a unifying and nurturing element that brings people together.

This connection to food proved invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic. Working in a busy emergency department during wave after wave of the pandemic and various lockdowns, Jessie was separated from her family. She found solace in regular Zoom cook-a-longs with her mother and co-hosted a Zoom cook-a-long for a Prince of Wales Hospital charity fundraiser. At a time where there was little else to do, Jessie and her housemates found excitement in planning elaborate Saturday night meals, transforming a mundane day into a momentous (and delicious) occasion.

At times, Jessie has taken her love of food to social media, documenting her experience making every recipe from Bill Granger’s Australian Food, and reviewing different restaurants with her friends. At one stage of the pandemic, the only way to see her family and close friends was during walks. They devised a routine of walking to various bakeries and eateries, sampling local creations. This inspired her mother’s new Youtube show, Walking up an Appetite (www.youtube.com/@walkingupanappetite). Jessie recently walked across Sydney with her mother and the film crew, enjoying Sicilian gelato in a brioche burger bun!

After a long day in ED, cooking is a helpful way to delineate her work and home life. To Jessie, the act of cooking is a form of mindfulness – nothing keeps you in the present moment like three pots on the stove and a dish in the oven! I can personally attest to the fact that Jessie’s love for food is a gift to those around her; she enjoys bringing treats into work, and cheekily admits that she loves the compliments from people enjoying her food. To Jessie, food is not just a way to nourish the body; it is a means to nourish the soul.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr Ashna Basu is a psychiatry registrar and President, Medical Women’s Society of NSW.