When we were still able to visit the office several days a week, the Humans of FASoS interview could still be held at our beloved Banditos.
Last week, I met Elsje Fourie, assistant professor in Globalisation and Development Studies. We drank coffee and Elsje enjoyed a croissant for breakfast. Should that have given away what our conversation would be about?
Elsje tells me she is originally from South Africa and (after a few countries along the way) she moved to Italy in 2008 for her PhD. Afterwards, she moved to Brussels and then landed in Maastricht. She has two kids and “when you have kids, you need to switch off sometimes,” Elsje says. How she does that? Elsje is very much into the arts. She loves films and fiction literature. But she is not just a passive arts lover: she is writing a novel. Every Sunday morning, she devotes a few hours to it. She doesn’t want to give away too much about it at the moment, but will admit it’s about an elderly woman who ends up stealing a baby. For more, you’ll have to read the finished version!
But what helps her switch off everyday and not just on Sunday mornings? Elsje loves to cook. A few years ago, she combined her love for food with her love for writing and she had a blog called where the food is. She cooked a different meal from a different country every week. “I stopped at the ‘B’, but trust me, there are a lot of countries that start with an A!”, Elsje says laughing. When I ask her why she quit the blog, she explains to me: “when I was pregnant with my eldest, I was experiencing a lot of morning sickness and even the sight of the kitchen made me sick.”
Even though she stopped writing about her cooking experiences, she does still love to cook, as internationally as possible and a different dish basically every day. Her children sometimes help her cook. “I find that when the kids help me cook they eat the food more easily, because they know exactly what went into the dish. It’s funny to see the differences between the two: my eldest eats the thing she dislikes most first and saves what she likes most for last. My youngest often simply wants to know how many bites she has to take before she can have dessert.” Her signature dish? Spaghetti à la Elsje with basil, cherry tomatoes and pine nuts. Not the most complicated recipe, but always a crowdpleaser at her house.
