Cooking is my love language - Taiwanese stiry fry vermicelli (bí-hún tshá)
I may be fiery, I may be loud but I make sure you're fed because it's how I say I love you...
“You must love cooking? You do it all the time!”
I hear that a lot. It makes sense, my social media handle is literally ‘Tiffcooksalot’ so I must enjoy it, right?! But it never really feels right to say yes when I’m asked the question.
Since the Ex left at the beginning of the year, I have not cooked as much. I blamed it on lack of time and energy. It is difficult to juggle 2 kids, running both of their schedules and the household, trying to generate a grand plan to be a working mom, all while still working out on how to co-parent and co-exist with an ex partner without anger. So yes, it felt natural to lose the joy and curiosity I used to have for cooking. However, lately I started to reflect a bit more on my cooking journey…how did I get into it, why did I enjoy it and how do I get my cooking mojo back?
What I learned was, it wasn’t that I loved cooking. It was that I loved cooking, for him.
You could argue that I still have a love for cooking for my kids. But it’s not the same. The eldest is the easiest child. It doesn’t matter if I make a 3 course meal pulling out all the stops, she’ll also be just as happy if I gave her a bowl of pasta with ketchup, which incidentally was the Ex’s ‘specialty’ that she loved. The youngest…don’t even get me started on him. Why is he such a picky child?! I will never understand…his favorite meal is steamed rice with a knob of butter, a few drops of soy sauce and maybe some plain grilled chicken. No braised chicken feet or raw oysters for this kid!
Cooking for The Ex was a joy. Figuring out his favorite dishes, working on the recipes and tweaking them till they were perfect was one of my favorite pastimes. For example, learning how to cook Caribbean curry goat, tinkering each minuscule detail to get the right spice level to match his mom’s. Making roti from scratch because he said he just couldn’t find good fresh roti in London anymore. I can’t even recall how many chicken wings I trimmed, fried then sauced because of how much he loves my Korean fried chicken.
I used to lovingly pack every lunchbox he would take to work. It wasn’t just dumping leftovers into a box. I would actually pack each lunchbox before dinner was served. I’d line the bottom of the lunch box with hot steamed rice, top with protein on the left, then veggies on the right, then sometimes an egg on the corner (because what meal isn’t improved upon by an egg?). I would set the box aside till it cooled down. After dinner was done, I would return to it, the clicking sound of the lid would complete the process. It was like a dance. It felt ritualistic. It felt good. It was all of my love, in a small box.
