Culinary Recovery

A few years ago, during some internet discussion or another about food and cooking, someone diagnosed me as having “culinary amnesia” because I posted that all I could make were microwave dinners and peanut butter sandwiches. She didn’t know me well enough to know how dead-on she was. It truly was a kind of amnesia. My mom was a fabulous cook: even during the time when she was working 12 hour days as a single parent she managed to feed us well.

I learned to bake in my Home Economics class and thereafter started occasionally pretending I was sick so I could stay home and bake cookies or sweet rolls. (Not sure how or why my mom let me get by with that but it sure was a great way to reduce stress–and somehow my grades never suffered.) I was a camp cook during college and cooked pretty well for myself during the first few years of my young adult life. I even used recipes and shopped at coops for fresh ingredients for meals only I would eat.

I was a camp cook one summer. I cooked gourmet food for teenage boys. They were generally not impressed. And I wasn’t very good at making sure they got as full as they wanted to, but I was a creative and passionate cook.

I am not sure when my culinary skills started to fade, but it might have something to do fast-food. (I also blame that easy cheap way of getting full for the fact that I did not get fat until I started living in the city, at the historical intersection of a boom in fast food and drive-through dining face stuffing.

PJ courted me with food, although he “had me at hello.” I remember bursting into tears the first few times he made me a particularly good meal. For years, before getting a job that keeps him away from the house for up to 12 hours ad day, he fed me, and then our daughter JL very well. JL dubbed him the “Good Cooker Man” And he has influenced much of the cooking I do now. He still cooks for us on his days off.

I struggle with depression and the appearance of a good meal on our table these days is a chicken or egg proposition: either I made myself feel better by cooking or I felt good enough to try a new recipe. Either way it is a win-win in our family! As a stay-at-home mom by default, I feel the equal burdens of saving money and making PJ’s homecomings from his exhausting job pleasant. Also, a rewarding outcome has been that JL has become more enthusiastic and adventurous about food. I used to consider her a picky eater, but it turns out I was a picky cook! Sometimes she helps a little, other times she is just an appreciative eater. So when I cook well, I feel like a better person, wife and mom.

I feel I should add, lest I be mistaken for having a philosphical and political viewpoint that I do not posess: My feminism-from-the-cradle is not eroding! It’s just that when you have a job–and for now being a stay-at-home mom is my job–doing it well and feeling appreciated can’t be beat!