Cooking: Connecting to Our Bodies, Connecting to Pleasure
I am no food blogger, but I do enjoy food– and I do enjoy blogging. When the topic of cooking for mental health was suggested, I started reflecting on my own relationship with cooking. As tends to happen through writing, I thought my initial topic would be cooking and fun recipes (and it is! See below!), but I also discovered that cooking became a way for me to heal body image issues and nurture my relationship with my body.
I didn’t take much interest in cooking growing up. I relied on whatever my mom, who finds cooking to be both a joy and a drudgery, was making. But when I started babysitting my nieces and nephews as a teen, my sister would lay out ingredients with a recipe and instructions of what to make. I started with simple meals, like chicken enchiladas with canned sauce, and spaghetti with meat sauce (which grossed me out so much that I turned vegetarian for nine months).
When I started focusing on exercise and strength based workouts, that’s when I began cooking for myself. After stumbling upon some Instagram accounts for a paleo diet, I started experimenting with cooking different paleo recipes. Looking back, I see (for me at least) this was just one example of some disordered eating issues I had since I was little.
After college, I moved to Costa Rica for two years. In my small town, just a short bus ride away from Playas del Coco, on the pacific coast, I made a weekly trip to the grocery store to buy as many fruits and vegetables as I could on my Peace Corps volunteer stipend. I came up with all kinds of recipes–bought crappy curry blends–and ate a ton of overnight oats (hack: fill a mason jar with oats, water, and let soak overnight. Then top with peanut butter, yogurt, fruits, and anything else that sounds appealing to you!). In feeling out of control in many ways dealing with isolation, culture shock, and language barriers, cooking helped me feel like I still had some control over my day. In the land of gallo pinto (rice and beans) that’s commonly eaten three times a day, I swore off eating rice; I now see this as another aspect of some of my disordered eating as it was mainly motivated by a fear of gaining weight. But there were still evenings when my host mother, an excellent cook, would prepare me a filling plate of rice, chicken, salad, and platanos maduros (fried plantains), and I devoured each bite. Her preparing these meals for me was an act of generosity and care. I also survived on a lot of Cliff bars that I had mailed to me from the States.
After moving back to the States and getting married a week after my return, I had fun creating all kinds of different recipes with some more disposable income and grocery store varieties now that I had much more practice with cooking than I had when I left. I actually teared up once in the produce aisle looking at how many different kinds of lettuce were suddenly available. And have you realized how many kinds of peanut butter there are to choose from in U.S. grocery stores?
Through the years, I learned to cook, slowly, with lots of practice. My husband still laughs that in the earlier years of our marriage, in which we both shared the meal planning, prepping, and cooking equally, when I used way too much spicy mustard and balsamic vinegar in my recipes than one ever should. He was right about that one. And I realize now that cooking was one way I started healing my body image issues and prioritize my body’s cues, desires, cravings, fullness, and all of its needs.
Now, I am mostly the only one who cooks, because frankly, I prefer it to wrangling our small children instead (my husband’s duty). At times it is just another thing on my long to-do list, but I still find pleasure and enjoyment in it, especially when I have lots of time to pour a glass of wine, put on some music or a podcast, and experiment with a new recipe.
Cooking, for me at least, is a way to nourish myself and my family. As a mother of a toddler and a preschooler now, I am not pureeing vegetables anymore, but seem to only repeatedly serve instant oatmeal, yogurt, and Cheez-its. I can only hope that my boys will someday appreciate my cooking and long for its nostalgia the way often long for my mother’s. Yes, there are many times when cooking feels like a chore more than self-care, but with enough time and space, I still enjoy scrolling through social media to find some kind of recipe to recreate while getting lost in the act of cooking.
No matter what I’m cooking, it almost always begins with chopping up some amount of onion and garlic. Then, I brown the chicken, add in veggies and stock, depending on what I’m making. At least one meal a week is the chicken curry I have finally perfected in a way that my Nepali husband finds satisfying, dal (lentils), bhat (rice–yes, I eat it now happily!), and saag (cooked greens–usually turnip, unless the Food Lion store associate confuses it on my Instacart order from collard greens, but both work). For this, there is no recipe. Traditional Nepali chicken curry (or some sort of generalization of all its varieties) would include fresh tomatoes, but I prefer a thicker sauce whose consistency I can only get using crushed tomatoes from a can. I add in heapings of ginger, cumin, coriander, garam masala, meat masala, turmeric, and red pepper if we don’t have any serranos on hand.
Other go-to dinners include: Nigella Lawson's meatballs and orzo, which I have used the recipe for every time and still feel like I need an additional translation for the instructions. When we want something heariter, I make jambalaya, Moroccan chicken stew with an Indian-inspired rice pilaf, or anything smothered in pesto. For quicker dinners, I might use Ortega taco seasoning to season chicken breasts either in a skillet or cooked in an Instapot and plate with beans, rice, and/or tortillas with some kind of fresh-limed drenched salad on the side. If I have time, I may turn it into baked enchiladas smothered in creamy, melted cheese topped with scallions and cilantro. Basically, anything I make ends up being topped with cilantro (but not pastas!). Over the years, my cooking evolved from mostly vegetables and no starches to some kind of starch and less veggies–but I still find ways to work them in. Once in a while, I’ll try my hand at a shepard's pie or Guinness stew and swear I feel some visceral connection to my ancestors.
These are the meals I know how to make easily and would comfortably serve to guests; I wouldn’t dare try my hand at our traditional family holiday foods, until I suppose, when the day comes that I am the only one left to do so. These are the meals I have learned to perfect while growing in my understanding of my body, learning to appreciate it more for what it speaks to me and what it does for me, rather than just what it looks like.
I understand there are so many different reasons why cooking for oneself or for one’s family is challenging for anyone who struggles with body image issues or other mental health issues, as well as the logistical and financial aspects of it. Below are some hacks I’ve learned along my cooking journey that you might find useful in simplifying the labor of it all:
Plan two to three dinner meals per week but make enough to last at least two nights. This cuts down on the cost and mental and physical labor of preparing weekly meals. If you have extra by the third night and are over it, put it in a freezer bag to have for lunch.
Use Instacart or some kind of grocery app to help you see a visual list of all of the ingredients you will need and their prices. This helps you from forgetting an item and over-buying. We do pick-up, but many find the delivery fee well-worth saving you the trip(s) to the store.
Have easy meals in your repertoire that satisfy you and are quick to make when you need it. It could be ramen topped with egg and veggies or pasta with meat sauce which are easy and satisfying. Take a moment to center yourself and really ask your body what is it craving? What would find pleasurable to eat?
If you can, make some space in your schedule, perhaps on a weekend, to try out cooking a new meal that excites you–maybe something you have been hungry for that you would typically order out instead or something totally out of your comfort zone or a common meal from a cuisine entirely different from your upbringing. Find a recipe with an ingredient you’re unfamiliar with. Have fun in the novelty.
Freeze! Freeze! Freeze! If cooking really isn’t something you find pleasure in, cook bulkier meals that you can freeze for later. This is especially crucial for the postpartum period after having a baby, but can be helpful for everyone in different demanding periods of their lives.
Use the slow-cooker and/or Instapot which cuts down on dishes, allows you to do other things simultaneously, and creates a larger amount that you can have as leftovers or freeze.
Most of what I’ve written here refers to dinner ideas which have a little more variety than my other meals: breakfasts (hard boiled egg) and lunches (some sort of version of salad with the right amount of Newman’s Italian dressing). But maybe making breakfast for dinner is more appealing for you or maybe you make your dinners double, so you don’t have to worry about lunch the next day (again–zero feedback here for getting little ones to partake!).
Some people are more pragmatic than I am–they see food as fuel or are totally content with frozen dinners and simple foods. No judgment, but for me, cooking and eating are some of my favorite forms of joy that I don’t plan on giving up any time soon. Cooking is nourishing, pleasurable, and often the thing I need for a mentally taxing day. It evokes all of the senses and connects us to our upbringings while also exposing us to new cultures. It helps us connect to our bodies and appreciate them beyond just their mere appearance. It’s a way of continuing traditions and making memories with our loved ones, long after the meal is eaten and the dishes are done. So, in the best Julia Child’s shrill and comical voice that I can muster, bon appetit!