There is a plate on the counter. Fig jam, a little cheese, whatever crackers were still in the cabinet. Nothing was planned. I just started pulling things out.
This is not cooking. But it's the first thing that looked like caring, which is close enough.
For a long time, food was something I got through.
The avocado, eaten straight out of the skin over the sink. A spoonful of nut butter for the protein, another for the fat, and then the jar goes back in the cabinet because that's enough. Not because I wasn't hungry — sometimes I wasn't, and the forcing something down was its own particular kind of awful — but because the production of it, the heat and the smell and the whole effort of making a meal feel like a meal, required a kind of wanting I didn't have access to. A calorie is a calorie. I knew the macro, I hit the number, I moved on.
I was not eating badly. I was eating practically. There's a difference, and it took me a while to understand why the practical version felt like such a loss.
The shift didn't announce itself. It rarely does.
It looked like an ordinary weeknight, nothing on the calendar, ground chicken thawing in the fridge, and me standing in front of it deciding that tonight we were going to eat something that tasted like something. I didn't chop anything. The garlic came pre-minced in a jar. The onion came pre-diced in a box from the produce section. The carrots came shredded in a bag. I'm not chopping anything from scratch right now. That's not a failure. That's a philosophy. Bachan's Japanese BBQ sauce over the whole pan, because it does the work of ten ingredients in one pour. Microwave jasmine rice. Done in twenty minutes.
He ate two bowls.
I stood at the stove while it cooked and felt — not happy exactly, but present. Like something in me had decided the evening was worth feeding.
This is where I live right now, in the middle of it. Not at the avocado, not yet at the dinner party. Somewhere in between, building back the appetite for cooking the same way you build back anything: slowly, without demanding too much of yourself too soon.
Bachan's over ground chicken or turkey is a regular rotation. Primal Kitchen sauces when I want something cleaner. TJ's vegan pesto stirred into red lentil pasta, which takes twelve minutes and tastes like I planned it. The 5 Ingredient cookbook open on the counter, pesto meatballs on a sheet pan, simple enough that I don't lose momentum halfway through. The yogurt pizza I've been making with a Greek yogurt crust — not from scratch, not yet, but it's doing great for now.
The common thread is sauces doing the heavy lifting so I don't have to. Clean proteins that don't need strategy. Meals that have flavor and warmth and feel like something without requiring full capacity. This is what cooking looks like when you're rebuilding the desire for it. Not impressive. Not hosted. Just real, and warm, and made with hands.
There are things I've been looking at that I haven't bought yet. A garlic grater plate, handmade ceramic, painted blue, from artisans in southern Spain. You press a fresh clove against the ridges and work it into a paste by hand. You do not have to do this. There are jars for that, and I own one, and I'm using it. But I want to want to do this. That's the distinction I'm living in right now.
A bottle of chili-infused olive oil that comes in a ceramic chili-shaped bottle you're meant to keep on the counter. Not in a cabinet. On the counter, where it can be seen, because the kitchen belongs to someone who lives in it and cooks in it and has things worth leaving out.
A wine glass with a long stem and a bowl wide enough to cradle in your hand. You pour it before the food is plated. The evening gets that.
What I keep coming back to is the version of it that lives in my head. The paste spread across the plate, good olive oil poured over, fresh dill, rosemary, cracked pepper, Maldon. Parmesan grated over the top. A sourdough loaf pulled apart at the table, olives and feta alongside, a wide-bowled glass of zinfandel already poured. Nothing formal. Just beautiful.
That's where this is going. I'm not there every night. But the plate is on the counter, and something is on the stove, and he's at the table, and that's further than I was.