Since I was a young teenager, I have loved to cook. I came to the world of cooking for the wrong reasons; newly diagnosed and armed with the belief that it was possible to cure my autoimmune disease through food, but I stayed for the right ones. I found cooking soothing, a welcome distraction from the sickness that consumed my personal life and a pleasing break from my creative exploits. There’s a popular quote from Heartburn by Nora Ephron (I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that book is great, but it’s great) that explains the joy a lot of people gain from cooking:
“What I love about cooking is that after a hard day, there is something comforting about the fact that if you melt butter and add flour and then hot stock, it will get thick! It’s a sure thing! It’s sure thing in a world where nothing is sure; it has a mathematical certainty in a world where those of us who long for some kind of certainty are forced to settle for crossword puzzles.
I’m a creative person, I like to make things, and cooking brings me the satisfaction of conjuring something from nothing whilst also being able to switch off. I like following instructions and gaining knowledge whilst still feeling like I’m doing something relaxing and positive for my mental health (I do not like doing dishes, but that’s what partners and flatmates are for). In times of mental strife, cooking brings me the same sort of peace that running does, but it’s easier on my knees and I can do it in my pyjamas. Crucially, cooking is often possible for me when other activities are not. When I am unwell, I am usually still able to make simple recipes, and it brings me a feeling of accomplishment that is all too elusive during periods where I’m too sick to work.
In March 2020, I found myself with a lot of free time and very limited ways of spending it and so, I cooked. I set myself challenges to learn and perfect recipes, and I wanted to learn how to make things from scratch: breads, pastries, pastas, condiments, my goals were endless. My (often unsuccessful) experiments were a way to simulate progress and movement in a time of great stagnation. And then, I decided to monetise my cooking prowess. My partner’s family owned a coffee shop nearby, and they were struggling to find suppliers for bread and cakes during the pandemic, so I said that I would give it a go. Simultaneously, I opened an online shop for vegan cake orders, and before I knew it I had a small but surprisingly consistent group of clients. The problems here were myriad: I was not well enough to run a small business, I found it difficult to say no to anybody and therefore overwhelmed myself very quickly, and most importantly, I was not experienced enough to be selling my baking and so I was consistently disappointed in my end product. I was a competent home cook but that did not mean I was good enough to go pro. Sue me! I was bored and I felt like everybody was setting up small businesses and I was proud of the things I was making. It was a mistake I would be very hesitant to repeat but my biggest regret was that this venture completely destroyed my love of cooking. All of the positive things about cooking seemed to evaporate the second I started monetising it and doing it for people who weren’t myself and my loved ones. I remember a time, early in the pandemic, when I willingly set an alarm for five o’clock in the morning and jumped - yes jumped - out of bed to cook my sourdough that had been proving overnight. Or another time, when I was fifteen and I decided to make gnocchi from scratch for the first time (I had never even eaten gnocchi before??) for my whole family and I totally fucked it up and sulked all evening. Or yet another time when I got a very bad essay grade and decided to channel all of my feelings about it into mastering a complicated cream cheese brownie recipe. My D grade remained a D, but the brownies became my culinary bitch! All of this joy was gone by the time I had been running the cake biz for a year or so. So I stopped taking orders and hoped that everything would go back to the way it was. Spoiler: It didn’t! I didn’t manage to regain my love for cooking for years. And furthermore, not cooking and baking for fun left a hole in my life that I hadn’t expected; I stopped wanting to host as much, my dinners became very boring and samey, and Sundays afternoons became exponentially less fun without a homemade baked good.
Recently, my partner and started eating meat again after a long period of vegetarianism. I had been vegan or veggie since I was fourteen, so I had never cooked meat for myself before, and I thought a big new challenge might help reignite my curiosity and passion in the kitchen. And it worked! I’m cooking all the time again (obviously I never totally stopped cooking; I still had to eat, but feeding myself had become a chore). This time, I’m aware of how good cooking is for me mentally and so I’m conscious of not allowing myself to lose the joy again. To do something well is one of life’s great joys, and to do something well for no particular reason; for no financial or professional gain, is vital in a society that encourages us to quantify our self-worth by our capacity to make money and be productive. This weekend, my parents are coming to stay for a night, and instead of going out for dinner, I suggested we stay home and I cook. I know that in the coming days the planning of this casual dinner party will take up a good 50% percent of my brain space, and that will be 50% that is not spent worrying myself into a negative thought spiral or obsessing over work. In quiet moments, I’ll mull over my mental to-do list: the signature cocktail, the wine, the compilation of an ingredients list, the buying of the food and cooking itself, and when everything is completed and I’m clearing (hopefully!) empty plates from the table, I’ll feel pride; an emotion that I experience shamefully little.
Furthermore, as I write this essay on a drizzling Thursday afternoon, I’m thinking about what soup I’ll make for lunches next week, and whether or not November is the month that I’ll finally embark on the tall task of making dumplings. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, but the thought itself has already brought me a not insignificant amount of contentment. And sometimes being content is the most radical act I can think of.
