To be perfectly honest, I do not know what my relationship with food is. I wish I knew. I love it, I get all sorts of pleasure from it, whether it is eating it or making it. I love taking my time to make something, whether it is something I have made a hundred times before, or if it is the first time I have made it, and the only thing that makes it all worth it is if someone enjoys it. Sure I will like it, but I want someone else to truly enjoy it. I want to wow someone, but that does not happen all the often anymore. I live with my husband, a teenager and two small boys, they make it very hard on me, they have a very different relationship with food.
My hubs is super picky when it comes to food, and he always seems to criticize my cooking. He is so picky he doesn't ever let me make the easy things like tacos, or spaghetti, I can't even make the hamburgers. If I do make them because he is busy or will be home super late, he finds a way to remind me that he likes the way he cooks better. He will be eating the food, and yet can't say wow babe thanks, that was good. It is always something like, next time when you make this can you do XY and Z instead??? It isn't as if I add extra stuff, or that I cook with different ingredients than him. I open the same type of sauce and cook the same noodles, but I make them taste different than what he wants. Maybe the meat isn't in small enough chunks, or too big of chunks. Maybe I salted the noodle water and he doesn't. It isn't as if I add mayo to the sauce, or put ice cream in the taco meat. It is always small things, but do they really change the meal, or make it inedible? Not really, but he can't just be happy, he has to make his suggestions or tell me how it wasn't as good as when he makes it.
He doesn't seem to get that this does not help me and that it hurts. I mean it is good enough for you to eat it, why can't he just be grateful?? The worst is when he acts like he enjoyed eating a particular meal, he will even say nice things about it, then the next time I suggest making it, he tells me everything that was wrong with it, or that he didn't like it anyways. So I feel as if he lied to me and that I really can't trust his opinion and what he tells me about food or anything else. I am not even sure he knows that he does it. When I remind him that he seemed to like it, he looks at me like I am crazy and becomes more negative about it. This makes my cooking anything even harder, because I never know what he wants or expects from me. He is also bothered that when I cook I don't use a recipe most of the time, and so things won't taste just the same next time.
My teenager can't be bothered to tell me what he thinks of my food as he eats everything in sight. The most I will ever get from him is either "meh" or it was "good." Not much else. He used to love my cooking, loved tasting things for me, loved giving me input. But know he seems to think I am an idiot that needs all sorts of help, but I can't expect it from him. It is a miracle to get him to help in the kitchen anymore. Even if it is just to get something off the top shelf for me.
My youngest boys aren't ones that can provide input other than "ummm good" from the toddler. The other is still nursing.
I feel empty and alone when it comes to my food quest, that I am here taking this path all on my own. I am also a stay at home mom, with a limited income, so I don't have many pleasures or escapes, so I think I have made cooking one of them. I know grocery shopping has become one. I enjoy finding new products to try in the store and love creating something new. I find cooking a challenge, and can really get a boost of self esteem from it. But just imagine what could happen if someone was to respond in a positive way over something I have made., what that would do for me. I want to explore food, and the way it makes me feels and my emotional response to it. Why do I crave certain things, why I am driven to conquer certain things, like bread. I want to understand why I find passion in cooking and eating.
I wish I didn't feel an emotional connection to food, I wish I could just see it as something that helped me live. But it is so much more. It makes me feel good, it can make me feel guilty, I can have pride in something I make, but also feel completely devastated when something doesn't work, or if someone doesn't like what I make. How do you think it makes me feel when I make a dinner I know on else wants to even try?
I know I am not the only one that feels this way. I know that for many people food is much more than a means to an end. Maybe I need to realize that I am the only one that I can control, and that I will have to find a way to find joy in myself and my food. That I can't rely on others, but that brings me back to feeling all alone.
If you have to rely on yourself for all your happiness and joy, you feel isolated and cut off. Why be married and have a family then? Why be social animals? I don't think it is healthy for humans to be expected to find all their joy from themselves. I think we need that from others also, my problem is that I tie my self esteem to food, whether it is making it or eating it, and I have a family of people who don't give a crap about whether I feel good about my cooking, and my relationship with food good or bad. They don't understand that it seems to make me who I am and what I am about. I mean come on, I didn't get this big without having some sort of relationship with food. I am just trying to turn it around to a healthy one. One that makes me a better person. So in the end I guess I am on my own, and will always will be. And that to me is just sad. Makes me want to go find something good to eat.
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