Tags

, ,

Just say “no” to food porn.

Like everyone else on the internet, I’m on Pinterest. And I used to really like it. I would browse every now and then when in the need of something relatively mindless and fun and check out cute ideas for baby stuff and immaculately staged house photos and it was all fantastic. Until everyone I know got an account and suddenly… the onslaught began.

Little did I realize that EVERYONE I KNOW is a closet foodie as my Pinterest homepage of people I follow suddenly went from “outfits, decor, the occasional recipe, some baby stuff” to “ALL FOOD PORN ALL THE TIME.” And friends, it’s making me batty.

First, I must confess that I have food apathy. I’ve been told that I’m just “not interested” in food and at the time, it felt like a big insult and I tried to be all “I like food! No really, I do!” and now, I’ll own it. I eat food because I need to eat. I like the food that I eat to taste good. If I did not have to eat and could get by with caloric intake in pill form and not feel hungry, by G-d I would.

There. I said it.

I feel a bit like admitting that I’m asexual or that breathing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. With all of the obsession I see surrounding food, the near-worship of it, I’ve started to wonder if perhaps I’m missing something. Maybe not necessarily something about food… but something about me. Are there special food joy sensors that everyone else has got and mine are just stuck on “meh?”

The fall out of this, as you can imagine, is that I do not enjoy cooking. Now, this isn’t to say that I can’t cook – I’m competent enough in the kitchen. And I do cook… minimally. I may not enjoy food for the sake of having a culinary adventure, but I absolutely can NOT stand shitty food and would rather not eat than eat crap. So, I cook as I’d rather eat food that I’ve cooked than something heated up (though there have been plenty of times in my life where due to the constraints of time and energy, heated up food was as good as it got) – but it’s never anything terribly adventurous or involved. I use mostly simple ingredients and pre-made sauces. Lots of pasta. And hey, this is me we’re talking about, so “burrito night” isn’t “once a week” so much as “any damn chance I can get away with it.” (Oh man, if I had to survive my entire life on one food? It’s gotta be a good burrito.)

Until now, my moral failings in the kitchen haven’t bothered me. So I don’t want to cook. So what. So I don’t really have the motivation to go the extra mile past “good” to “extraordinary.” Bah, who cares? Well… as it turns out, having a child who eats real food complicates my feelings on this greatly.

Let’s back up to my own mother. My mom is an amazing cook who not only cooks to continue existing, but actively enjoys it. And she produced me, whose cuisine is peppered with a liberal amount of “whatever.” If I’m just making the same six things and none of them are more interesting than burritos… what’s Paulo’s take on food going to be?

This is where my foodie friends and I can get together. No matter what, food is personal and it becomes a part of who you are as a parent. No matter your own relationship to food, you want your children to have a happy and healthy relationship with it. You know your children will associate specific foods with their childhoods and you want those foods to be good. It may not embarrass me to eat PB&J for dinner, but I would hate for Paulo to have memories of how his mom didn’t care about cooking and he just ate sandwiches.

So, here I am. A food prude with aspirations of sexing up my cooking. I’ll probably never achieve full on foodie porno status, but I hope to at least get beyond apathy. Now, to combat the real challenge… a kitchen with no dishwasher and almost literally zero counter space. I have a counter. It’s barely bigger than my laptop. And yeah, there’s only the one. I swear I could be more motivated to cook if I had space for more than one pan.

In the meantime, I’m starting my own pinboard for recipes that only take one g-ddamn pan.