I used to think I hated cooking & it was too girly of an activity for me
I used to think I hated cooking.
I thought I was bad at it. I thought that I was a feminist woman and cooking was below me.
The first month I stayed with Jordan, I did not cook him one. Thing.
And then… when we started to talk about living together… he was like, I can’t take care of every meal.
So I had to sit with where my resistance was to it. I was like – why does the thought of this make me want to shut down and run away?
I remembered my family making fun of what I cooked. My ex telling me how I wasn’t the cook, he was.
Me internalizing all the criticism into “I don’t like this anyway.”
I didn’t want Jordan to have to handle everything. So I was like, fine, I’ll cook for you.
And I made him honey garlic chicken thighs, and he about died when he took a bite.
He complimented me about 100 times throughout that meal.
I cried.
And then we went away to the coast of BC (where we happen to also be right now) and I cooked every single meal.
And I suddenly remembered that I LOVE cooking.
I bought flowery aprons. (Even though part of my mind was like, ugh, am I becoming a GIRL now?!)
I bought flowery oven mitts.
I took a lot of pleasure in choosing our cookware and filling our spice drawer.
And I realized that not only do I love cooking… but I’m also actually really good at it.
Really quickly, I began raising my eyebrows at recipes, instinctively knowing which instructions to follow and which to alter.
There were some things that didn’t taste so great (to me).
But I began to look forward to seeing Jordan’s face light up at every single meal, his face as he said “my love, thank you again for another delicious dinner” no matter how good I felt the meal actually was.
It felt like I reclaimed a huge part of myself.
I don’t cook all our meals anymore – Jordan gifted me the spaciousness of having most of our meals delivered and taken care of.
But when we’re away, like this, I get to cook again.
The recipe creation. The tasting of everything. The choosing the foods at the store.
And I get to remember how much I love it.
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