From Gourmet Cook to Takeout Queen: Culinary Burnout Is for Real!

It's my turn to be waited on.

Author in her native habitat.

It’s not quite summer yet, but this is a rerun. If you hit ❤️ at the top or bottom of this email, you will make me smile bigly and help others find this publication. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

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I have a confession to make.

I hate cooking.

There, I said it. I'm a woman who hates cooking in a world that expects me to find deep spiritual fulfillment in chopping vegetables.

So sue me.

Ok, I’m not being completely honest here. There was a brief period when I embraced culinary pursuits. This tick in time occurred when I was a young adult, and meal planning and prep had yet to become my job. I loved it when my then-husband showed me techniques I had never learned from my mother, like how not to overcook asparagus.

I was shocked the first time I ate this vegetable, and it didn't wrap around my fork like a piece of spaghetti. Who knew that vegetables weren't supposed to surrender completely to heat? Apparently, there's something between raw and completely defeated.

But my role as chief cook bound me to years of planning, shopping, prepping, and producing delicious, nutritious food for my family.

It was exhausting.

I wouldn't have felt so beleaguered by cooking if my then-husband had assisted in daily meal prep. He had outstanding culinary skills, which unfortunately only appeared when we had guests coming.

Voila! He'd whip up a spectacular five-star meal, which my children refused to eat, so I'd have to cook and serve them something else. 

I prepared nightly home-cooked meals for over twenty years while working one and sometimes two jobs. Complicating things, my then-husband had rules—no casseroles and no Campbell's soup recipes. Apparently, I had married a man who thought 'easy' was a four-letter word. Which it is, but not the kind he was thinking about.

To make things worse, all the eaters in my home were finicky.

With the microscopic vision typical of young eyes, the kids would search for an offending green thing or a dreaded piece of chopped onion in a meatball. Children can spot a fleck of parsley from across the room, but somehow never notice their backpacks on the floor.

It's a gift, really.

I’d find smatterings of green dots and onion squares scraped along the rim of the plates, uneaten.

I refused to serve bland food, and I continued to season my creations despite the harshness of my critics.

My wonderful mother-in-law taught me to make delicious eggplant parmesan, and I followed her instructions to the letter. The smell alone was worth making it! My children, however, were incensed at being served a vegetable as a meal and deemed it "horrible." To this day, they still remember how much they hated it, even though they all like eating eggplant now.

The thing about teaching children to appreciate good food is that they have absolutely no interest in learning.

One of the reasons I started my daily wine-drinking habit is that, for what seemed like one hundred years, my son would sob whenever I placed his dinner plate in front of him. The first time it happened, I felt bad for him for having such big feelings, but every time afterward, it was simply infuriating.

Nothing says 'maternal success' quite like your child weeping at the sight of your lovingly prepared meal. It's like getting a standing ovation, but in reverse.

Looking back, I think my boy may have had some sensory issues, but to me, at the time, he was another unsolvable problem. To this day, my daughters do a spot-on impression of his mealtime wailing—a performance my son has yet to live down.

Perhaps it's too late in this piece for you to believe that people considered me a pretty good cook and baker, despite my son’s tears.

My carrot cake won a blue ribbon at the church fair, and I am known for a solid A+ lasagna. My then-husband and current husband cite the cake and the lasagna as good enough reasons to have married me.

Weird coincidence, am I right?

A German cousin who once stayed at our house for a week called my meal preparatory services worthy of the moniker, "Ilona's Restaurant."

Ilona's Restaurant - where the chef gradually loses her will to live, but the food is apparently decent. It’s got a ring to it!

Of course, I had my share of flops.

Not frequently, but once too many times, I'd make a new recipe, and my then-husband would sample a bite, shake his head, and push the plate to the center of the table. My kids watched him do this, mouths agape. Then they’d screwed their little faces into question marks, and they'd stop eating, too.

That would be the end of the meal.

Do you understand by now why he is the then-husband?

My biggest regret is that I've never been able to poison any of them.

Though to be fair, with their eagle-eyed inspection of every meal, they probably would have spotted the arsenic before the oregano. My kids are grown now and have their own kids, who also refuse to eat vegetables. I have never been happier to watch karma in action.

For now, I cook dinner two to three times a week, and afterward, I'm ready for bed. I wonder how did I ever do this every day? I guess the wine helped.

My current husband doesn't cook and, for decades, subsisted on take-out during his extended life as a bachelor. A lover of pizza and Chinese food, he's okay with ordering.

I know takeout isn't good for me because the portion size and salt in restaurant food are too much. I manage with a few low-effort meals, such as avocado toast or a tuna sandwich.

When the kids, their spouses, and the grandbabies visit, we order out. I tried cooking for ten people, but I ended up on the couch in a heap after everyone left.

Why do that to myself?

Not cooking means I have more time for writing and being outside in my garden. Working in nature creates a good kind of tiredness.

What is your favorite thing to do? Comments, please, and don’t be afraid to say you enjoy cooking! If that’s your jam, please invite me over. I’ll gratefully accept and bring a bouquet.

Here's me putting together one of my compost bins last year. I know it’s not exciting, but y’all like to click on things.

I have two bins, so the compost can always be composting. Current husband, are you reading this? For the last time, one box is for new kitchen scraps, while the other is for heating up and breaking down the old. There is a method to my madness, and yes, it makes total sense.

Curley cue device above composters is a tool for mixing the compost.

Thanks for reading, friend.

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