Interview by John Hind 

Daisy Lowe: I almost died from choking on sweets – twice

The model on childhood food memories and the perils of raw parsley. Interview by John Hind
  
  

Daisy Lowe at On the Roof with Q, Selfridges, London W1 on 26 June.
Daisy Lowe at On the Roof with Q, Selfridges, London W1 on 26 June. Photograph: Levon Biss/The Observer

When I was three years old I turned blue and almost died – twice – choking on boiled sweets I'd stolen from the top of the fridge. The first time I had the Heimlich manoeuvre from a next-door neighbour; the second from my gran.

The only vegetable I liked when I was little was broccoli, which I called trees. I'd say, "I'll only eat the trees."

When I was younger I can remember really wanting my mum's boyfriend [now husband] Danny to like me. He was a hippy vegetarian to the extent that once, when I asked him to hold my McDonald's burger while I did up my shoelace, he shouted at me. I craved meat on a daily basis.

Sugar was my real addiction. I kept a box under my bed of CDMs [Cadburys Dairy Milk], Tunnock's caramel bars, Snickers, Cream Eggs and – my absolute favourite – Flakes.

At a casting for one of the big fashion shows, when I was 15, I was sat with my portfolio, eating a bag of M&S's Percy Pigs, and another model came up and asked "How long do you wait?" She was asking, "How long after eating something before you vomit?"

My grandpa's family are all quite overweight and he's got this big, rock-solid belly which I used to love to fall asleep on as a child. My gran is always putting him and herself on a diet, and she always put my mum on a diet and – trickling down – me too, in a pestery way. Yesterday Gran asked me "How's your weight?", so I said, "I'm going now. Bye." When I go to my mum's in Somerset at the weekend, that's when I tend to pig out on chips and a tube of double stuffed Oreos. If I'm only there for one night it's fine.

When recipe-testing for my cookbook, I was making melon and cucumber ice-cream with almond milk and raw honey using green melons, but I didn't put the blender lid on properly. Bright green flew everywhere across my baby-blue kitchen with cream walls and pink fridge. The first thought I had was to Instagram a picture, then I spent two hours cleaning up.

Raw parsley makes me gag. It's the same for my mum and my sister. Which is funny because apparently parsley was used to suffocate witches, back in the day.

I've been dreaming a lot recently about food, waking up starving. There's a cake that keeps recurring, from a bakery that's now shut down in Brooklyn where I took a warehouse space when I was 19. This was vegan cake and I think they called it a strawberry shortcake. And oh my god, it had the lightest moistest dreamiest sponge, with cream, strawberry jam, strawberries, amazing icing and it was very big. I wake up upset, thinking I might never know the recipe.

In terms of beautiful views while eating, I love Babington House in Somerset looking onto beautiful lake, beds, hills and forest. And there's a place called The Post Ranch in Big Sur, California, with breathtaking views of water and flowers down a hill, where for four mornings I had the same breakfast – pancakes and muffins and as much maple syrup as I could fit on one plate.

Sweetness & Light by Daisy Lowe (Quadrille, RRP £15) is out now

 

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