Peeling Potatoes 40: Food, Faith… and Finding What Fills You

We are live. Slightly puzzled, because Zoom has clearly had a quiet little revolution overnight. There is a sign-in button where there wasn’t one before, AI companions hovering in corners, and somewhere between South Africa and France, two entirely different versions of Zoom seem to exist. But that feels strangely fitting, because this episode lives in that same in-between space—between confusion and clarity, between routine and something a little deeper.

Episode 40. Forty weeks of peeling potatoes. And still—remarkably—we’re here. Still talking, still laughing, still finding something worth holding on to.

We begin, unusually, with a warning of sorts. In our line of work, there are topics you simply don’t touch. Religion is one of them. Politics, Fruitloop adds immediately. The two classic no-go zones. The unspoken rule is clear: avoid them if you want to keep things comfortable.

But then comes the pause.

And the decision.

We don’t care.

Not in a reckless way. Not in a provocative way. But in the sense that these things are part of life, and if you want to talk about life honestly, you cannot keep walking around them. The key is not whether you talk about them, but how. Respectfully. Curiously. Without the need to win. Just to understand.

And so, we step in.

It starts lightly, as always. Time zones. The final episode with the one-hour difference. It sounds insignificant, but it hasn’t been. That one hour has quietly shaped everything—meetings, energy, rhythm. And now, on Sunday, it disappears. For a while at least, things will align again. Same time, same place. A small victory, but one that feels bigger than it should.

And then the conversation turns.

The Mayor brings something that has stayed with him. A sentence from a Russian client, who is also Muslim: “I am never alone. God is with me.” He says it honestly—he understands the words, but he doesn’t feel them. It’s not resistance; it’s simply unfamiliar. His world growing up didn’t include that kind of belief. Churches were beautiful, yes. Music was moving. But the connection—the personal certainty—was never there.

So the sentence lingers.

And instead of trying to explain it, Fruitloop brings a story.

A Saturday morning in. A church talk. A radio presenter, from Bloemfontein, speaking about food and God. It sounds, at first, like it might be about dieting, but it quickly becomes something far more grounded.

Fruitloop, describing the talk, begins with a simple question: Why do we eat? The obvious answers come easily. Because we need to. Because it gives us energy. Because it’s pleasure. In France, as the Mayor says, food is practically a conversation strategy—mention it, and you can safely step back while everyone else takes over.

But then the question deepens. Why do we eat when we are sad? Why do we eat when we are happy?

And suddenly, it’s no longer about food.

It’s about chocolate in the freezer. Bread that feels like comfort. Carrots, when you’re trying to behave. It’s about eating not because you are hungry, but because something else is unsettled.

The presenter’s story lands because it is ordinary. She describes herself as a middle child—not the first, not the last, just somewhere in between. Loved, certainly, but slightly overlooked. Over time, that creates a small space. Not a dramatic trauma, just a quiet gap.

And that gap becomes a void.

She filled it the way many people do. She ate. Through school, through university, through travels across Europe where every bakery became both a delight and a distraction. She made promises to change, to lose weight, to take control. But nothing really shifted.

Until she stopped focusing on the food.

And started asking better questions.

She began looking back—at herself as a child, as a teenager, as a young adult. She started noticing patterns. And slowly, she realised that food had never been the problem. It had simply been the easiest way to fill something she didn’t yet understand.

What changed everything was not what she removed, but what she found.

She found purpose.

She moved from acting—where she once lay on stage as a silent corpse—to speaking, writing, connecting with people. The energy that had gone into eating found somewhere else to go. And without forcing it, her relationship with food changed. It returned to what it was meant to be: something to enjoy, not something to rely on.

And this is where the story becomes personal.

Because the Mayor turns to Fruitloop and asks the obvious question: what is your purpose?

And she answers immediately.

Doodle Horse.

No hesitation. No searching. Just clarity.

She describes the moment it began. Driving home after dropping her son off at school. A quiet prayer—not dramatic, not desperate. Just honest. She wanted to do something meaningful, something creative, something that used what she had been given.

And then, almost immediately, the idea came. As she drove over a speed bump outside the mall, it arrived—clear and simple. Create something. Write. Design. Combine your experiences with something deeper. Make something that others can use.

And she started.

Not perfectly. In Afrikaans first, which she now questions. With images that are still evolving. With ideas that keep growing. What began as a colouring concept has already started expanding into planners and reflections—something practical, something real, something hers.

Life around it hasn’t magically become easier. Days are still full. Afternoons are still unpredictable. Work still pulls in different directions. At one point, she even had to be stopped—gently but firmly—by the Mayor, who told her to put everything else aside for a day and focus on this.

It wasn’t easy to accept.

But she did it.

And at the end of the day, she said something simple: it had been a good day.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, another thread quietly weaves itself into the conversation. A message. A line that Fruitloop wrote as part of a long message:

“In the Bible it says dont worry about tomorrow because God will provide.”

It is a comforting thought. But Fruitloop grounds it immediately. Yes, there is trust. Yes, there is belief. But it is not passive. It is not about sitting back and waiting for things to fall into place.

You still have to show up.

You still have to do the work.

Trust, in that sense, is not something you assume—it is something you build. Something you earn through action, through effort, through how you live your days.

And suddenly, the idea becomes practical.

The Mayor may not feel belief in the same way, but he recognises something just as real. He sees that Fruitloop has an anchor. Not something abstract, but something lived. It shows in what she creates, in how she structures her time, in the way she returns to what matters—even when things are messy.

And perhaps that is where the conversation gently lifts.

Because whether you call it faith, purpose, or simply direction, the pattern is the same. You don’t fill your life by avoiding the hard questions. You fill it by engaging with them. By creating. By trying. By paying attention.

Food doesn’t fix what is missing.

But finding something that fills you—something that is yours—changes everything.

It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It can start with a small idea on a morning drive, a notebook, a plan that doesn’t quite make sense yet.

But once it’s there, something shifts.

Tomorrow will come.

There will be challenges. There will be uncertainty.

But if you show up, if you do your part, if you stay open—somehow, things tend to meet you halfway.

And that, quietly, is something worth trusting.

Forty episodes in, still peeling potatoes.

Just… a little more honest about what really fills us.