This blog is often a place I come to to process something or to remember. I wanted to write out something that has haunted me since about 2004. What has haunted me? The making of meals.
If this is not your struggle than your capacity to understand it will be very low, and you may have many suggestions that bubble into your mind immediately about how this issue of mine (that will seem startlingly simple and ridiculous to you) can be resolved.
I have heard it before.
I grew up with a mother that was anorexic. She had been this way since the age of about eleven and it was just a part of my entire life and still is to this day. My dad worked as a chef. The complexity of that still is too much for me to try to untangle. My mom was regimented in what she ate, she exercised every day, she was often very very thin and the meals she ate often did not match the ones we did. I didn't know that this would affect me so much, but oh look, it did.
My mom did a majority of the cooking the our house and she was a good cook and an amazing baker. My dad cooked on special occasions. I was never someone who was a 'foodie' like a few of my siblings. Food was good, sugar was comforting, but I wasn't naturally talented with food in the way that I observed others around me were.
I noticed as a teenager and young adult that I had issues with obsessing about food. I never binge ate or restricted myself, I never dieted although I loved to exercise, but it was never in excess. However I noticed that I would obsess about food. It was really quite tormenting and I could not turn it off in my head. I didn't really do much about it (as in give into the obsessions) but I noticed it was there and wondered how to help myself. I also was always quite poor and so I couldn't afford to give into any cravings or obsession hardly ever anyway.
Then I got married at only twenty one years of age. I was immediately the primary cook and only cook in my house. I wish I would have had the foresight to stop that immediately and that my husband and I could have been on equal playing fields with that. I wasn't a bad cook, I could make what I put my mind to and I could bake as well. However my husband from the start had acid reflux and an allergy to strawberries and bananas. Then my oldest daughter also had an allergy to citrus. My oldest son came along and had so many allergies I didn't know where to turn. As time passed making food that had to revolved around restrictions became harder and harder to handle. I found that when I wanted to think of a meal my mind went blank. It was like food had somehow been a trauma that my body didn't want to have to manage. I wished I didn't have to eat. I also found I had so much anxiety around food after I had cancer.
When I had cancer I learned about all the toxins and preservatives put in food in a way I had never thought of before. Going to the grocery store started to cause me panic attacks because of all the chemicals everywhere in the packaged food and sprayed on the vegetables. I had grown gardens from the year 2003 and so we had fresh veggies each summer, but I grew more and more aware of the dangers of food in my country as my children grew.
My oldest daughter loves most foods and so when we had meals together she happily ate. When my biological children came along meal times because really hard. They made such big deals about foods they didn't like, textures they didn't like, and meals were filled with screaming and anxiety. It was awful.
In general I have not produced a layed back, easy to work with, child that eats and sleeps and enjoys life. As a human being I cannot produce that sort of person.
As the years went on I have found that making food multiple times a days for this many people has become a nightmare for me. I had a few years where my oldest daughter made most of our dinners and that was a relief. However other than that I have made almost 100 percent of our meals. Sometimes my husband will make a breakfast but he does not clean up after himself and it never feels like a break. He is also willing to put a frozen meal into an oven but he would never cook a healthy from scratch meal which is how I often cook. My oldest daughter lives in our basement suite and we will sometimes cook together and that is such a blessing.
It has been such a burden for me to feel this pressure to produce healthy meals laden with nutrition when people won't eat, have issues with heartburn and sensitivities, now we have two celiacs in the family, and no one can tolerate dairy well.
It all may sound like an excuse to you
But for me there is some sort of block, some sort of issue, that has been so hard to deal with because it affects me every day multiple times a day.
Tonight I made chicken soup. I had bought organic chicken from Costco and cooked it, froze the meat, and made broth from the bones. Tonight I cut up organic celery and onion, softened it with avocado oil and water in a hot pot, added grated sweet potato, peas, corn I cut off the cob, gluten free brown rice noodles, home made broth and the chicken. I forgot to add carrots and spinach which I had planned to add. The dinner table was the usual. I had two kids crying and fighting not to eat it. I also am the one at meals who enforces any manners, or gets children to eat. It is exhausting.
And I come from a place where I so long for a lovely dinner time. I have tried lighting candles (they fight over who gets to blow them out), I have tried calming classical music and more. We all sit down and I say a grace, and we often go around the table and try to talk about our favourite part of the day; but often by dinner time the day has been so intense that for the last few years I make dinner and then collapse into bed. I hope my husband will give me a slight break I guess and think that maybe if they are all at the table this is my chance to rest. The older kids don't like sitting at the table with the younger kids, forgetting how awful they themselves made dinner not that long ago!
It has actually been such a heart ache for me as I have longed to have a family that looks a lot different than the family I have in fact created. Food is at the heart of culture, at the heart of celebrations, food means a lot. I so wanted to be able to create good comforting food, I wanted people to like it, to savour it. It has been the opposite.
Today that made me so sad and I needed to write it out, to see it, the history, the progression and reasons as to why it has gotten to this place. My next oldest daughter who could help cook mostly refuses. She hates cooking and is one of my most picky children. My oldest son could be a good cook I think but he has been shown that cooking is woman's work really and he only will heat up frozen meals.
My next son would also be a good cook and I am going to try to recruit him in the kitchen more. He is a great baker and has confidence in that area.
When I really put it all out there in front of me I realize that I really adore food. I adore healthy food from cultures that have flavour and that are colourful and fresh. I love to watch cooking shows and look through cook books. However lack of money, allergies, anxiety, and exhaustion have all become a part of meal prep for me. I try to avoid thinking of food but each morning one of my first anxious thoughts is what I need to make for dinner.
I have so many tools I have collected through the years to help with these issues. Meal plans, grocery lists, food lists of what can be eaten, but it doesn't take away the history, the grief, the anxiety, the wishing for a different reality.
I also know how BLESSED I am to HAVE food. How blessed I am to have money, grocery stores, access to cook books and meal plans; I mean the list of blessings is endless. I try to recite them, always have them in my mind, and move forward doing what needs to be done.
However this affects me every day, and maybe there is someone else out there struggling who thinks that they are odd or alone in this,
If you are going through this,
I am sorry.
It is not easy is it? It feels like such a heavy load, and imagine if someone just lifted it off for you and offered to carry it. How different would your life feel?
I hope that happens for you somehow
I send you my love,
Tansy
