I hope you like tears in your eggs.
He told me to, “just cook the fat like bacon.”
Me: “How do you cook bacon?”
And what does it mean when you burst into tears making scrambled eggs?
So many questions for one little breakfast.
It seemed so damn simple. I went over to cook my lover breakfast before he left for a work trip. I packed eggs, a tomato, an onion, and an avocado in a little canvas tote he had given me on a trip we returned from just the night before. “This could work “, I thought to myself. Those ingredients all sounded like things that I had heard people put into their eggs. My oldest daughter orders fresh produce for the house each week, so we had some on hand.
Before I went looking, I didn’t know what we had in the fridge.
I put my kids on the school bus, got dressed, and drove over to his condo. He needed to leave for his flight at 9:00 am. We had 90 minutes before he was gone for another week. Loverman travels a lot.
I would’ve much preferred that he ravage my body for those 90 minutes, satisfying a different hunger, if you know what I mean. Not because I was particularly aroused, but because it would’ve been emotionally much easier than making him breakfast. I’ll take sex over food any day.
Cooking feels like a foreign language to me — one that I have no interest in learning. I am a recovering anorexic.
I have gained 20lbs in the past ten months, and I’m still a size 2. (I was a 00). I’m an “eat to live, not live to eat” kind of a girl.
Cooking feels like a foreign language to me — one that I have no interest in learning. I am a recovering anorexic.
My guy is the opposite. He speaks food fluently. It’s his native tongue — a love language.
He used to be overweight and finally hit a crisis point which drove him to lose 60lbs. He looks incredible and I am proud and inspired by his commitment to his physical health. He still relishes food, but only really great, healthy food. He imagines different combinations of flavors and anticipates enjoying upcoming meals. Most importantly, he considers savoring meals together a relationship need.
I’m not sure we could be a worse match in that respect.
I was raised in the meat and potatoes Midwest, sitting down to nightly 5pm dinners, like meatloaf covered in ketchup and green beans from a can. Milk was always served with meals. Grilled cheese sandwiches were made with white bread, margarine, and Kraft singles.
When I was 10, rolling up the crescent rolls in the wrong shape wasn’t worth the sigh and eye roll that would inevitably accompany my attempts to help my mom in the kitchen. I was never invited anyway and, had I been, I wouldn’t have accepted. I’ve been angry with my mom for as long as I can remember — If she was in the kitchen, I wasn’t going to be there.
She had food issues, too. She’d pick at her plate and pooh-pooh when people would notice. To this day, she eats like three things and makes sure that people know that when they offer her anything. “Oh, no. I only eat plain, grilled chicken or salmon.”
She takes pride in her abstinence — a perfect role model for a budding anorexic.
In short, no lessons + no interest = grown ass woman without the most basic of life skills.
So, when the guy I am dating, whom I really like, said, “Enjoying great food together is a relationship need for me,” it’s was a punch to my empty gut.
But I decided to try, because that’s how I roll. I reframed his statement from my brain’s interpretation— a statement of my deficiency — into a call to action. I offered to cook him breakfast, not realizing in doing so I’d be putting my astounding incompetence on display. How hard could it be?
People who are scared of water don’t become boat captains.
They probably don’t date them either.
I know nothing about food. I don’t know what temperatures to cook things. I tend to burn dishes because I try to rush through the process to get it over with. I don’t know what flavors go together. I don’t know how to time dishes to make a meal work. If it’s anything beyond the aforementioned Kraft and Wonderbread grilled cheese, I am an utter and complete (albeit somewhat willlful) ignoramus. I have tried, guys. But even when I follow a recipe, it still turns out bad. It’s as if the food knows that I hate it.
I do know that you need to bleach your counter after you put raw chicken on it.
And that feels like an important thing to be aware of — except I’m a vegetarian.
So when my guy was scurrying around getting ready and said, “cook the fat like bacon” (because he’s a keto guy and into healthy grass-fed animal fats right now) and I replied with, “How do you cook bacon?”, his eyes darted up from his task with a look that was part pity, part incredulousness, and wholly confused. I could count the number of pieces of bacon I’ve eaten in my life on both hands. The number I’ve cooked? On zero hands. I knew it wasn’t normal. I felt pretty fucking stupid.
Then, after he took time out of prepping for his trip to slowly and patiently explain it to me, and I still did it wrong because I didn’t even know how to peel an avacado, I felt even more stupid.
And finally, when I overcooked the fucking scrambled eggs that even my 8-year-old can make, because I was staring blankly into the spice cabinet trying to figure out WTF would be an appropriate choice after he had casually hollered at me to “just be creative” from the living room, I lost my shit right there in the kitchen.
I felt so incompetent. Hopeless. So I had myself a little pity party and cried a sad, little salty river — right into the eggs.
He came over and hugged me. He told me it was okay to fail and that if we didn’t like it, we’d make something else. He helped me figure out the rest — what spices to add and what to put on the side — and we ate the crappy little egg mess I had managed to create together. He said it was fine, not great. I appreciated his honesty.
Then I helped him finish packing and took him to catch his flight. The airport protocol for the previous 18 months had always been to park and walk each other to security for a proper send-off.
This time he asked for a curb drop.
I had to force myself not to read anything into that.
Of all the ways that I imagined my food issues interfering with my life, this was not one of them. The problem is that I don’t want to learn how to cook, much in the same way that I don’t want to get up at 5 am every morning. It doesn’t feel good. I’ve always been someone who said that if there were a little pill I could take every day that would meet all of my nutritional needs and avoid food altogether, I probably would.
Except that I’m pretty sure that I am missing out on an important unifying human experience. Food is not just chewing and swallowing — it’s love and community and connection. And I know that changing my relationship with food is beneficial to both myself and my daughters. (For the record, I cook good enough for children, but adults— not so much.) So I have embarked on learning to cook with the same zeal with which I get up at 5 am. I’m not thrilled about it right now, but knowing that my guy needs it in our relationship is a great external motivator, since my internal motivation is currently lacking.
And that’s progress, friends. I do want to be someone who enjoys every component of eating and contributing and savoring — just like virtually everyone else I know. The only way to make something a habit and learn is to just do it, whether I want to in this moment or not.
When my lover makes me meals, the food tastes so damn good. That’s an experience I never really had before I met him. It feels like something to build on. It’s something I’d like to be able to recreate for him and my girls and all the people I love.
I also would like to rid myself of the embarrassment of being a 39-year-old woman who doesn’t know the difference between chopping and dicing.
I know that my ignorance and apathy about food are born of a dysfunctional place, so I will keep trying to learn. It’s important for me in more than one way. This is part of healing from my anorexia. It’s part of becoming the person I want to be. I may never be a master chef, but if I get to the point that I can make some decent scrambled eggs without crying my goddamn eyes out, that will be a good start.
—
Originally posted on Medium.
—
What’s Next at The Good Men Project? Talk with others. Improve your relationships. Join our Love, Sex, Etc. Social Interest Group
RSVP for Love Sex Etc. Calls
Join the Sex, Love Etc. FACEBOOK GROUP here.
We think you’ll like our SOCIAL INTEREST GROUPS—WEEKLY PHONE CALLS to discuss, gain insights, build communities— and help solve some of the most difficult challenges the world has today. Calls are for Members Only (although you can join the first call for free). Not yet a member of The Good Men Project? Join now!
Join The Good Men Project Community
All levels get to view The Good Men Project site AD-FREE. The $50 Platinum Level is an ALL-ACCESS PASS—join as many groups and classes as you want for the entire year. The $25 Gold Level gives you access to any ONE Social Interest Group and ONE Class–and other benefits listed below the form. Or…for $12, join as a Bronze Member and support our mission, and have a great ad-free viewing experience.
Register New Account
Please note: If you are already a writer/contributor at The Good Men Project, log in here before registering. (Request new password if needed).
◊♦◊
ANNUAL PLATINUM membership ($50 per year) includes:
1. AN ALL ACCESS PASS — Join ANY and ALL of our weekly calls, Social Interest Groups, classes, workshops and private Facebook groups. We have at least one group phone call or online class every day of the week.
2. See the website with no ads when logged in!
3. MEMBER commenting badge.
***
ANNUAL GOLD membership ($25 per year) includes all the benefits above — but only ONE Weekly Social Interest Group and ONE class.
***
ANNUAL BRONZE membership ($12 per year) is great if you are not ready to join the full conversation but want to support our mission anyway. You’ll still get a BRONZE commenting badge, and you can pop into any of our weekly Friday Calls with the Publisher when you have time (Friday calls only). This is for people who believe—like we do—that this conversation about men and changing roles and goodness in the 21st century is one of the most important conversations you can have today.
Need more information? Click here.
♦◊♦
We have pioneered the largest worldwide conversation about the changing roles of men in the 21st century. Your support of our work is inspiring and invaluable.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Men
Photo credit: stevepb on Pixabay