As a girl I hardly ate anything except dried bread, bacon, Jammie Dodgers and microwave chips. I was the fussiest, pickiest eater, sitting stubbornly in a battle of wills. And when I had a choice between going to eat or setting fire to things with a magnifying glass, I’d choose the latter.
I have a (non-identical) twin sister, born before me, and in old photos I’m always the scrawny one with collar up, wild hair and bloody knee. My sister’s lack of fussiness about food made up for my deep-rooted super-fussiness. I could move food from my plate to hers. Or hide it in my pocket to feed to local stray cats.
My parents split when I was seven, but I do remember Dad roasting the turkey one family Christmas, with the plastic giblet bag left inside. Later, my sister and I started going to my dad’s flat in Oldham every Saturday and he’d cook us a Sunday roast. He had a little gas stove but really prided himself on his roast chicken, potatoes and peas. They were delicious and probably the start of me looking forward to a meal. Afterwards we’d sit by the gas fire melting chocolate digestives and sticking them together.
I moved to London at 16 and lived for a month in a room with a Polish model called Ludmila, existing on KitKats. Then I was living alone in a room with cockroaches in a really dodgy neighbourhood of Paris. I had a grocery store across the road but I didn’t know how to cook yet so I ate dried Weetabix and pears.
I turned 17 when I was living in Tokyo and felt liberated. I’d never got properly drunk before and suddenly I was drinking sake late into the night. I’d only had fish fingers before and now I was loving sushi. I’d never even tasted rice before Tokyo. I suddenly felt fearless. Everything was so exciting and culturally different that I made the decision to taste anything. It took this move into a very different environment to realise the joy of food. It was like being in The Wizard of Oz, moving from black and white to colour. And for the first time I started trying to make meals for myself. There were a lot of mistakes. Burns, grated knuckles, food poisoning.
Living in a rented loft in New York, at 18, I started cooking roasts like Dad. I had a long banqueting table and I’d sit eating and drinking too much wine with new friends. There were rats and the oven would often break and I’d have to call the landlord to fix the pilot light, but that loft was one of the greatest things that’s happened to me.
After I married Jack White we moved to Nashville. I’m not discussing our Divorce Party – that’s too psychologically mad – but settling in Nashville I really felt properly at home for the first time. I’ve got friends there unconnected with my lives in fashion and music. They call me “Mama K” because I invite them over, cook on my La Cornue [stove], pour them wine and we get on like a house on fire.
I’m one of those people who is thinking and worrying all the time, except when cooking. My mind clears. I’ve never written a lyric about food, except perhaps “I’ll eat your heart out”, but Distant Shore the final song on my album, was written in my kitchen, alone with snacks and a bottle of wine at 2am.
It’s more than two decades on from when I was a really fussy eater. Nowadays it’s a constant negotiation as to how many bites of each meal my own kids have to take. My son’s fussier than my daughter. She’s just turned 11 and dyed her hair blue and announced she’ll never order off a kids’ menu again because now she’s an adult.
I’m from Oldham but I’ve never liked mushy peas. The thought – the texture – makes me gag. Conversely, when I try to take my parents out to nice restaurants nowadays, they say “Indonesian? What’s that?”Sometimes I visit and announce ‘I’m going to make you lunch’ but they say “Sorry, I won’t try pasta” and I just think, ‘Oh, for God’s sake”. But Dad, bless him, is well into cooking now. He sends me photos with messages like, “Look, I’ve just baked bread for the first time in my caravan.”
Double Roses is out now (1965 Records); Karen Elson tours the UK with Ryan Adams in September
