I used to hate cooking. I still kind of do. I was never forced to nor do I have any traumatic experiences with it, so what caused disdain for such a mundane thing? When looking into it, there are multiple reasons: laziness, impatience, fear of failing or setting the kitchen on fire. I wasn’t raised cooking with my family and was very used to food just being there, and because of that I wasn’t even patient enough to boil water. I also didn’t allow myself to be “bad” at anything, so if I thought I would be bad, I just wouldn’t do it. While all of these are definitely my reasons, I realized that it’s not that I simply hated cooking, I hated that it was expected of me.
My dad is the cook of the family (and he’s great at it) so I never viewed cooking as a gendered role. In middle school my friends couldn’t believe my dad cooked the most, while I had thought nothing of it. Growing up, it was annoying and confusing hearing from how important it was for me to cook “as a woman” as if that defined my womanhood. Or hearing in casual conversations “Well how do you expect to get a husband?” from my elder family members and friends (and some strangers). I began to see as a teenager through these conversations how women are expected to practically be training to be a wife, like that should be my ultimate goal. But what if I don’t care about having a husband? Why is cooking treated as the most valuable thing a woman can bring to a marriage? With a father that cooks and a mother that doesn’t have to ask him to, how I grew up greatly contradicted what I was seeing and hearing outside of the home. For a long time, no one could convince me to try to cook because being a good wife was the only reason they could give me. I stuck to grilled cheese, lazy spaghetti, and canned soup.
As I aged, the same views snuck their way on my social media. I still loved watching people cook, man or woman, but I let comments from men about women cooking online affect how I viewed cooking in general. “He’s a lucky man” when a man isn’t mentioned in the video, or “Where do we meet women like you at?” I didn’t want to enjoy or be good at cooking because I didn’t want to seem like I was auditioning for men; I didn’t want them to view me as a choice for a “good” wife. I saw my hatred for cooking as a rebellion against misogyny.
That’s not to say I didn’t try to cook; but I did let my failures fuel my hatred. If I can’t cook, why would I like to do it? I would try things sporadically after high school, but once I got between my sophomore and junior year of college, I had to cook unless I wanted to eat instant ramen everyday. There were a few dishes that shaped my cooking journey and how I started to unlearn the idea that cooking made me a traitor to feminism.
I love brown sugar cinnamon PopTarts, so I started adding those ingredients to pancake mix. At the time (high school), pancakes were the only “extra” thing I would cook, and the first dish I could call my own. I made them on Saturday mornings and they made the house smell so good.
The first time I wanted to cook for my family in high school, I chose something relatively simple and included an ingredient I love: Pesto Chicken Pasta. It was terrible. The chicken was undercooked. I didn’t use a recipe (I know, this was my fault) and therefore the only ingredient for the sauce was the pesto. This made me think that I just shouldn’t cook at all and I didn’t for a while.
After my first semester as a college junior living in an apartment, I was (somewhat) comfortable in the kitchen and started to enjoy cooking for myself, but wanted to try cooking for my family again. We have a tradition where each member picks a day to cook a special dinner leading up to Christmas. I decided to make a seafood pot pie with crab and shrimp, using pre-made pie crusts and Red Lobster’s cheddar biscuit mix as the topping (one of the best chain restaurant bread options). It was the first meal I was truly proud of myself for making, and my dad really liked it, my biggest accomplishment.
The first dish I cooked completely for someone else, the very thing I used to be against, was white seafood lasagna. This was a birthday gift I made for my friend in January. I took inspiration from my mom, who made a white chicken lasagna, but went with shrimp and crab – yes, again. This meal broke my views I had before of cooking for someone else; I did eat it, of course, (it was delicious) but I cooked it for someone else, and she enjoyed it. Cooking didn’t feel like a chore when I wanted to do it, and I didn’t feel like a servant to the person I was cooking for. We were still equals.
The more I cooked the more I realized that not cooking isn’t a “feminist” action. I was centering my hatred around men and letting the stigma control me. In fact, by treating cooking only as something a woman can do out of duty and not love, I was just like the misogynistic rhetoric I would complain about. I learned to love cooking as a service for those I love and nourishment to myself, not as a tool for marriage. Ironically I do love servicing others in different ways like driving and carrying things, so once I started to see the community cooking brought and felt the satisfaction of loved ones liking what I did for them, I no longer cared about being anti-cooking out of spite. The satisfaction of cooking for myself was enough to break the barrier. And I now think it’s more feminist to reject the meanings of roles that society places than aiming to be the opposite. My “rebellion” I realized actually gave more power to the misogynistic ideals I wanted to avoid. Next I’m going to conquer desserts.