Zine Review: Depression Cooking

Depression Cooking: easy recipes for when you’re depressed as fuck
Sonali Menezes
28 pages
https://www.instagram.com/sonaleeeeeee/
https://linktr.ee/sonaleeeeeee

Depression Cooking is a black and white, US half-fold size primarily text zine of recipes as well as advice and thoughts around eating when you are dealing with depression.

I’m reviewing this zine in January and decided to do so because depression is even more common at this time of year. Remember you are not alone.

Depression Cooking opens with a content warning (touches on diet culture, fatphobia, disordered eating, [Sonali’s] body, and [Sonali’s] weight) before launching right into the introduction. Sonali writes about how this zine is a love letter to depressed kin, zines and how beautiful they are, wanting to make this zine for a long time, and then into Sonali’s history both in the creation of the zine and with food and eating. From there we get the formal introduction to the format of the zine itself, including recipes having categories of ‘Less Spoons’ and ‘More Spoons’ (spoons = energy if your’re not familiar with Spoon Theory). A detail I love because sometimes you have an extra spoon or two, but just trying to come up with a little extra somethin’ somethin’ for your meals uses those spoons.

We also have a table of contents, general tips for mindset around eating, a number of recipes of both savoury and sweet varieties, and even some sneaky playlists for you!

What I first anticipated as being a zine purely of recipes and perhaps a story or two became a zine that had good timing in my life in a number of ways. Not only have I somewhat recently experienced one of the worst depressive episodes I’ve had in years, I also have issues with disordered eating and a history with bad food relationships. I appreciated this zine just by my assumptions from the title, and I appreciated it all the more seeing how Sonali wrote about personal experience with and around food.

One special element to note about this zine is highlighted in the first line (after the content warning): “This zine belongs to everyone.” Depression Cooking is noted as being copyleft. That means you can make as many copies as you like and send them to friends (like my friend Anna Gecko sent this copy to me). You can find the free PDF along with others at the Linktree link in the details at the top of this review. (Sonali only asks that you never sell it.) I love that Sonali did this, especially given how common and impactful depression is.

All up, I think this is a fantastic zine on so many levels. I want to make copies and send them to everyone, and I love that Sonali has made it possible to do that. This is definitely one to check out for yourself and/or for a friend. You don’t always know who might be struggling.

Thank you Sonali.