YOU’RE NOT BAD AT COOKING… YOU’RE BAD AT FOCUSING
If you self-identify as being bad at cooking, you probably never gave yourself a real chance to be good at it!
Cooking is like any skill, developing it takes time, effort and consistency. But with cooking, getting a lot better very quickly is something most are more than capable of doing. If the statement ‘I can’t cook’ rings true to you, you absolutely can cook! you probably just lacked the presence to do it well.
Like learning to drive for the first time; are you going to get behind the wheel with the music blasting? On FaceTime? Eating some take out? Scrolling TikTok? no. You are going to focus. Because you are operating a new machine while learning a new skill. Cooking is the same.
The issue is most people think of cooking and eating as something that you have to do, but few give it the respect it deserves. You are literally fueling your car here. Instead of treating it like the main dish (pun intended), people who ‘struggle’ to cook well, often treat the process like the side piece. It is something you do on the side, while you are really trying to do something else. That’s why your ingredients are either undercooked and crunchy or brunt to a crisp. It is because you are not giving your attention. You have taken your attention elsewhere.
Let’s say you were roasting sweet potatoes for the first time. And they come out somehow raw on the inside but burnt on the outside. Do you then decide you will never cook again? Well, no that’s silly. Is there something here you can observe? If it burnt on the outside, but did not cook on the inside, likely is that the temperature was too hot. So you try again, and you take the little piece of wisdom that you learnt from your first mistake and you apply it, adjusting as you go along. You may even feel an impulse to cut them differently, perhaps like this they will cook more evenly. You think to yourself, last time I was folding laundry while they roasted, maybe this time I wash dishes instead so I can be close to them and hear what they need from me. This is a dance, and the dancer does not stop dancing for eternity simply because they fell out of rhythm with the music, they simply listen, and find their entrance to the song once more. By a little observation, what was my outcome? and little awareness, what did I do to get there? One can learn great things. These are not complicated lessons, but they are extremely valuable ones.
The kitchen is a great teacher. A great teacher of awareness, presence, intention and artistry. The best creatives I know are creative in the kitchen. The importance of putting love into your food was the first lesson taught by our elders. They would spend hours preparing food to feed the lineage. A true labor of love, and you could taste it! And maybe (for those of you who have decided you can’t cook), maybe the love has been lost a little bit. You can always taste when someone is cooking out of compulsion instead of desire. I may need to cook because I need to eat, but it is a pleasure and a gift to have the ability to cook for myself. To have food on the table that I will sit at. That I didn't need to scavenge and forage for days to find the ingredients in front of me. Perhaps, you are missing a little gratitude as well.
Crossculturally, we have made friends with the unknown by breaking bread. Food is our meeting place, it is how we welcome people and let them know they are safe in our presence. I think back to our ancestors, on their lands, when foreign travelers would journey past; the biggest blessing you could have offered someone was not gold, or jewels, or possessions. It was a home cooked meal. It was the gift of nutrition, the gift of filling their tank so that they may continue on their journey. Done with love, with curiosity and with pride: Pride of the land that gave us this food, and proud of how it is being cared for.
The more of us that connect deeply to our food, the more we will care where it originates from. The more we care for its origin, the more we will respect the hands that labored to harvest it, to slaughter it. The more we will recognize the life that is funneling into us, the more respect we will have for the planet.
Many things will be resolved by putting love back into the food. Love back into eating. Love back into caring for our bodies.
You are not a bad cook, you just haven’t given yourself the time to become a good one.