Cooking taught me how to love
Sausages were an upgrade from hot dogs. Not a huge upgrade, but they gave me something to work with. I removed the casing and used the crumbles in pasta, or sliced and served over veggies. They were hot or sweet or sometimes both – my local butcher was a perv and loved to ask if I liked my sausages hot, and I always had to dignify his question with a response to get them. But they were versatile and by far the cheapest protein on the Upper West Side. For those reasons alone, I served them every week.
Many people cook for the sole purpose of saving money. Without a rich cultural connection or personal memories affixed to the experience, they view cooking as a sacrifice in order to propagate their budgets elsewhere. I cooked dinner all week to let loose this weekend, I deserve this! I get it, I do. Right after my loans went into repayment and I started my first job, I quickly realized just how tight cash flow would feel. Our city rent was a stretch (whose wasn’t), and I tried everything to loosen that waistband. I never hated making my meals at home, but the process felt empty, devoid of purpose beyond picking up forks and putting them down. Calories in, another meal closer to Friday when someone else would do it for me.
Now I cook for other reasons, which didn’t materialize overnight but over a decade of small adaptations and lessons. Like learning a language, my skills and timing improve with each dish, each time I use them. One day, bagel egg and cheeses from the corner started tasting better as fresh-cut baguette and runny eggs over a zesty chunk of manchego. Blustery winter nights became an excuse to simmer chili, not order Chinese. I look back at Sausage Girl and hardly recognize her.
Empowerment in the kitchen compounds upon itself. The more you lean into it, the more it nourishes you back.
Cooking is creative. After a long day working inside of boxes, you get to work outside of them. You can use another piece of your brain. With a recipe or without one, there are no steadfast rules that subsume your taste – your tastes comes first. You decide. You reap surprising rewards from deep-dives in your pantry or an unexpected bounty of short ribs behind the meat counter. You pivot and re-center around what you find. You dazzle a group by dumping pots of steaming shellfish on newspaper, picking claws apart with your hands. Some of my best times are like that: self-made and random. Rolling cookie dough at 1am with our empty wine bottles. Obsessing over a friend’s burnt ends. Memories not made in Michelin-star restaurants but anywhere. You can make them anywhere.
Cooking is transparent. For better or worse, you are what you eat (and what you’re eating eats). I learned this after years of mysterious health issues, which culminated in a gestational diabetes diagnoses that forever changed the way I view food. This is a story for another day, but I cannot overemphasize the role I’ve played in my own healing due to food I make at home. You can learn where your proteins come from and patronize local farms with sustainable practices, but you don’t have to be perfect to improve. Just being able to make conscious decisions around what goes in your mouth will trim cups and cups of added sugar and other junk from your life.
Above anything, cooking is love. Once you learn the language, you can speak through your food, communicating things we don’t always say: I love you. I’m sorry. I’m thinking of you. I may not text you 1,000 times a day, but I’ll hurl challah rolls at your doorstep when you’re isolated with COVID. You might be busy, but your husband dropping off that TikTok salad meant something to me. Actions speak as well as food heals. It shows how you care. And cooking together is the ultimate love language. Spending hours and hours making lasagna with my husband for Valentine’ Day. Giving my oldest daughter sous chef responsibilities whenever she asks for them. She eats almost nothing – her diet consists of carbs and nuggets – but when she draws pictures at school, they are of us cooking together. Of Thanksgiving prep that starts at dawn and birthday cakes that explode with sprinkles. I am creating a foundation for her, a warm hug that surrounds her and grows with her. I hope she will miss these times, and that someday, they’ll bring her home.
I don’t greet every trip into my kitchen with a smile. Obviously. With competing priorities in life, how could you? But years into learning this language, I gain from it a sense of pride and give from it my joy. I implore you to search for an ounce of what I find in the experience, and know that it’s never too late to dig in.
Here are some easy ways to approach your new culinary journey. First, cheat a little. Visit the prepared foods department for pre-marinated items, which will allow you to focus on just cooking them without needing to worry about more daunting tasks like seasoning or making a sauce. When you’re ready to move past the “heat and serve” phase, consider using proteins that are harder to mess up, like organic ground beef, boneless skinless chicken thighs, and frozen wild shrimp. Also, high-quality condiments and marinades (loving Bachan’s and Primal Kitchen) are your friend. So are kitchen gadgets! The Instant Pot has changed my entire perspective on soups, stews, and previously slow-cooked meats. Having a multi-functional non-stick pan like the Always Pan will also be a major advantage. Lastly, FAIL. Don’t be afraid to fail. I cook dishes that devolve into a dumpster fire all the time, but I learn from doing it, and if I’m lucky, it’s still edible. Even if it’s not, it’s just another lesson in my cookbook.
Love to cook? Share with me your favorite dishes. Afraid of a box of pasta? I’ll give you a pep talk, averagejoelle3@gmail.com.
The little things
I’m not much of a food photographer these days (too busy eating). But here’s our dinner from Wednesday night: teriyaki bowls. I seared chicken thighs, broiled shishitos, made a quick pickle of some cucumbers and red onion with rice vinegar, and served over rice. Delish.
Also
I can’t stop thinking about Jennifer Senior’s piece in The Atlantic this month, “It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart,” in which she wrote about the cultivation, dissolution, chronic pain, and true value of adult friendships. I’m clearly not the only one, as Heather Havrilesky went deep on it in her Ask Polly newsletter, too.