When Cooking Feels Impossible - And Why it Still Matters

Recently, I took a few days off from cooking. The reason? I had far too much work to do at my full-time job, so much so that by the time I was finished, the very last thing on my mind was what to prepare for dinner. The kitchen itself felt like the last place I wanted to be, even when I just went in to refill my coffee. For my meals, I was fully on board with simply picking up my phone and ordering whatever food looked good that day: a foot-long veggie sandwich, bean tacos, falafel gyros, pizza. 

There’s nothing wrong with eating out on occasion. It’s an important part of enjoying what’s local and getting inspiration for what to make next for my food blog. The problem is when it spirals into a habit. 

About midway through September, I experienced one of my worst burnouts in recent memory, the repercussions of which I’m still feeling. It quickly spiraled into a brief, but no less brutal, episode of depression. All my writing stopped. No ideas came to mind. I had no energy or desire to take photos with my new camera (the one that cost me $580). Almost all of my blog work, which has always been my escape from work-related stress, fell to the wayside. And cooking, for the first time in a long while, felt like an unbearable chore. 

Take-out food became a saving grace then, a way to nourish myself and give me the time to heal. But the thing of it was, I wasn’t exactly healing, not in the way that I needed to. 

Bedford, Virginia - The Peaks of Otter.

I used to live in a small town in southwest Virginia, where there were exactly five options for take-out food. None of it was amazing, and we rarely ordered it unless we were sick or if we had an evening commitment. Amidst these bland options, I decided to see what I was capable of making myself. And since then, cooking has always been a way for me to explore the world’s cuisines, to taste the abundance of flavors the world offers. I was constantly pushing the envelope of what was possible with a small kitchen and whatever ingredients were available in our small, rural community. 

Eating out never had the same pizazz. Even when traveling, I missed being able to cook. I’d review a menu at a restaurant and challenge myself back home to make something similar. And whenever I did, the end product somehow always felt more nourishing and meaningful. 

What I didn’t realize then, but know now that I’m a food blogger, was that cooking gave me life. It allowed me to be an artist and express myself in ways I found impossible to do in any other format. 

Eatery on Boylston Street in Boston, Massachusetts.

When we moved to Boston, suddenly we had access to an overwhelming amount of eateries and fine dining options. Anywhere you walk, there’s a Korean BBQ joint, a pizzeria, an Indian restaurant, ramen noodle joint, or a luxury cafe with delectable pastries and cakes. 

Despite these options, I kept cooking, this time in a larger kitchen, but with access to a much wider variety of ingredients than I was previously used to and an incredible array of inspiration to draw from. I experimented with foods I’d never heard of before. I finally mustered up the courage to start my own food blog. All of which is to say, cooking food still nourished me the way it had. What was more, my passion finally provided me a creative outlet, a way to share something that was wholeheartedly me, mistakes and all. 

And that’s why this most recent break from cooking felt so different. Instead of feeling rejuvenated, ready to get back into the kitchen and do the thing that I love, I started to question why we should cook at all. 

The truth is, I completely understand why people don’t cook as much as they used to, or even at all. When presented with a wealth of options, to say nothing of the abundance of meal kits or frozen entrées, cooking can suddenly feel quite silly. Passé. Inefficient. We all have so many other things on our plate. Why should cooking be one of them?

Being where I am geographically, I felt this even more fiercely than I perhaps would have earlier in my life. The world’s cuisines, marvelous delicacies that take no small amount of time and effort to create, can be readily available to us with a few taps on our iPhone screens. How can I compete with that level of convenience?

So why is it still important to cook, in this modern, culinarily diverse world of ours? Why bother with the effort if it only makes us tired and even more burnt out than before? Partially because I was genuinely curious, and partially to convince myself and others, I started to hash out my own reasons.

Home-cooked food does so much more than nourish us physically. It does something for our inner lives that very few other things can. There’s a reason why someone else’s cookies don’t taste like the ones your loved ones made you when you were little. Or why takeout pasta doesn’t have the same flavor or texture you’ve come to love from your own dishes. When we talk about homemade food, we do so knowing there’s a kind of magic to it that’s hard to put into words, a feeling that only this particular food can produce.

And that’s the rub: only we have the means to recreate this for ourselves. Though cooking can often feel like a chore, especially after a long day, it’s also one of the finest ways to care for yourself. You know what foods will keep you healthy as you go through a difficult time, what meals will give you that feeling of comfort, belonging, and strength. You know exactly how you like your favorite meal. Only you can experience the joy that is playing around with a new recipe, or making something with an ingredient you have a deep connection to. In cooking these meals, you’re caring for yourself in a way that takeout food never can.

And even though it’s not always the cooking itself as it is everything else that’s involved in the process (meal prep, waiting for water to boil, cleaning up the mess afterwards), there’s still a chance to change things up, to make the time yours. Got a load of podcasts or audiobooks you’ve been meaning to get to? Start one! In the mood to dance? Put on your favorite music and go for it! The more you make this time more enjoyable, the less cooking feels like another thing to check off a list, but rather something that’s personal and wholly yours: a time to be your most complete self.

But finally, cooking also forces us to give ourselves space. There are many times when I’m in the middle of stirring a soup, or putting together a salad, when I start to think about things I hadn’t let myself think about during the day. Sometimes cooking time isn’t the best moment for dancing. Sometimes what we really need is a chance to mull something over. When we’re alone in our kitchens, things have a way of bubbling up to the surface. In giving myself the chance to let my thoughts and feelings come as they may, I started to work through some issues I’d maybe been setting aside for too long, things I needed to address if I wanted to feel well again.

Once we’ve unblocked ourselves, learned to enjoy the process and to deal with the things on our plate that we didn’t order, we’re better able to share our love with others, to cook for them and offer our lovingly prepared homemade meals. Because nothing you eat outside your home will taste or feel anything like it. And in doing the work again, in being able to see past the labor and the mess and the mundanity of it all, we’re in a place to better love what we do again, to come back to it stronger for having survived the struggle.

After a few days of forced cooking (it really did feel like teeth pulling at first), I started to experience this magic for myself again. The tides had turned. Chopping vegetables or waiting for the water to boil (it always seems to take ten minutes longer than it should!) wasn’t as burdensome as it had felt just a week or so before. And sure enough, the more I cooked my meals, the more ideas I had, the better my writing went.

We all need breaks at times. It’s only natural and healthy that we should. But it’s just as important to acknowledge when self-care becomes stagnation, or worse: an erasure of the things we hold most dear. After preparing a few new meals, meals inspired by the abundance of the new season’s offerings, I began to remember just how marvelous the actual work is, how sometimes the very thing you aren’t keen on doing is the very thing you need to do more of.