Downsized Expectations – Cooking and the Post-Pandemic Meltdown

Pandemic cooking was all the rage during the quarantine. According to my library checkout history I hopped on the bandwagon. Yet not one loaf of banana bread was baked in this home.

A Cooking Journey Through Life’s Ups and Downs

Lately, finding the desire to cook is a real challenge. It truly bums me out getting take out or fast food. Yet with my commute to and from work, by the time I get home, the last thing I want to do is figure out what to do about dinner.

Why haven’t I taken the steps to make a change for the better? I’ve read the books, I’ve watched the online videos showing me how to prep for meals ahead of time. What I really lack, and what can’t be found in the pages of a library book, is the motivation.

What is stopping me? How is it that when time is not an obstacle, I am still struggling to make cooking happen for me at home? Time to unpack the evidence.

How it started growing up in a working mom household

When I was in high school, my mother had gotten a job working at a bookstore belonging to one of my Great Aunts. I did not like this Great Aunt as this particular individual looked down on our part of the family tree, and she took advantage of my mother’s loyalty with shit pay, and terrible hours. Add to the equation that my mother didn’t drive, and we did not own a car, so my mother had to commute by bus, or walk.

Either way, it meant she didn’t get home before either me or my brother got home from school. In high school when I usually arrived home later because of many extra curricular activities like clubs, and sports, when she got home, she was often too tired to want to cook.

When she did get the desire to cook a meal, it was one of three or four dishes, old standards that she had the ingredients on hand at all times, and frankly it got boring.

My teenage years predate television cooking shows, and cable channels like Food TV Network. But I had Xerox copies of recipes found in magazines like Bon Appetit that I found at the library. I remember one recipe in particular that I had pored over several times for a fried rice dish using Shiitake mushrooms. it was like the most exotic thing I wanted to try. My mother had no interest to try making it.

An opportunity because of necessity

Eventually I convinced my mother to let me try my hand at cooking dinner, especially when I offered to include taking over the grocery shopping, since I had access to my best friend who I could get to give me rides to the grocery store with his mother’s car. It was one less responsibility she would then have to handle.

I made all kinds of things in those formative years. I don’t remember what dishes I made, but I certainly introduced a new repertoire of flavors into our small household. Cooking was such a passion for me, that had the cost of tuition not been an obstacle, I could have gone to the Culinary Institute of America, as I had applied and been accepted.

However, that didn’t happen and I joined the Navy instead. I had better sense than to become a cook in the military, no offense to all military cooks, but it is arduous and thankless work. Hardly glamorous and with few personal benefits.

Officially I have no formal training. Hasn’t stopped me.

Cooking for my family

Married, with children, cooking for them gave me a lot of personal satisfaction. I took pride in being able to cook delicious meals at a moments notice with whatever I had on hand. A skill necessary in the part of Virginia that we lived in since there were times we were blocked into the neighborhood from downed trees or other storm damage. A real possibility in a Hurricane prone area.

There was always something homemade in the kitchen. Snacks, baked goods, leftovers, options for whenever someone was hungry, which seemed to be all the time with an active family. For my kids growing up, food was an experience.

The household policy was you had to try it at least once before you could decide “you didn’t like it”. So my kids grew up liking vegetables, and international cuisine. Not just because they were military kids.

At the end of the marriage, I was still making the elaborate meals, but sharing them with the ex was painful and hurt emotionally, that he should partake in my labor of love when he clearly was not invested in this family in the slightest. Mealtimes, which used to be a dedicated time around the table for all of us to connect, went away as the ex distanced himself from the house, and eventually from our family dinners.

After the divorce

After the divorce, I was too depressed to get out of my bed, let alone grocery shop, or get into the kitchen to slap a meal together. Eating out was me dialing it in. My 2 sons didn’t complain at first because now they were eating all the fast food that we did without in all the years they were growing up. Also, they saw that I was barely keeping it together, and I’d like to think they cut me some slack. However, even the slack had it’s expiration date since they felt secure enough to call me out on it.

Attempting a change, I had a period where it seemed that with work, and going back to school, and volunteering, I still found time to cook at home. My commute was about the same, with the traffic, the construction, the 35mph speed limits, and the 20mph school zones. I have mastered the art of busyness as a coping method aka avoidance. If I’m too busy focusing on something else, I don’t have to deal with my own personal mess.

Those years in the apartment I did a lot of emotional avoidance. Despite having the motivation to cook at home for me and my sons, the one thing I had not mastered was how to downgrade from cooking for a small army to cooking for 3 or less. I threw away a lot of leftover food, wasted a lot of money on unused groceries that spoiled.

Cooking, present day – pandemic reality

The layout of my current kitchen is terribly inefficient. The apartment had a small galley kitchen. Everything was within arms reach. Cooking, though tight, was efficient and easy.

Sadly, I didn’t choose this house for the kitchen, as it was designed in the 70s by people who clearly didn’t do a lot of cooking. The location and the space between me and my neighbors were primary factors. And the kitchen was not great, but it worked, and I dreamed of a DIY remodeled space that would be made just for me.

I can’t afford to remodel my kitchen right now, I certainly don’t have the time. It would have been great to have had the money to do it when I had the time during the quarantine.

Marie Kondo would not approve

Unfortunately this kitchen brings me as much joy as the kitchen in New Jersey. Which is to say it brings me no joy at all. So I don’t spend a lot of time in it. Which means I am not cooking as it’s a pain in the ass from prep to finish.

Further illustrating how little I cook, we turned the unused dining room into a room for the cats. We don’t even have a table to eat at. I made choices when I bought this house that I realize are affecting my overall happiness.

Lately I have begun considering what will happen if my sons move out? I bought this house for them, but it’s like it was too little too late. Now that my youngest has graduated high school, he told me that if it weren’t for the pandemic he would not be living at home.

So this is my reality. The yoke of a home that I only tolerate, that lacks the appropriate space for me to pursue the culinary arts.

I chose poorly.