Why I hate cooking
Cooking is a privilege and there are better ways to spend time
I’ve always known I haven’t liked cooking, but it’s only recently hit me how much I really dislike it. I’m not saying I just find it annoying, either; I actively dislike the time-consuming, frankly boring process of cutting stuff up, heating it, and making it edible. It’s not even like I hate cooking because I’m bad at it. Certainly I’m no Mithaecus, the first known author of any cookbook, in which he described, in a single line, how to properly cook a fish. But I’m not too bad. I can make a decent pasta dish with a nice sauce. If I’ve got the right herbs, my fajitas don’t taste half bad, although I don’t make the bread myself. After I learned how to make the Japanese fast food dish yasai yaki soba in my second year of university, I’ve never forgotten. I hate it because I just don’t care about food. I’ve never been a foodie. I don’t find it that important. Someone once said to me ‘eat to live, don’t live to eat’, and I’ve been living my life like that since I heard it.
I recently spoke with my brother about what it would be like to live off powdered food, to which you’d add water and drink three times a day. There’s one that always seems to pop up on my Instagram — Huel. Not a bad idea, that. No fuss, no stress, no wandering around the supermarket and getting annoyed because someone’s already pinched the last aubergine — just a litre flask, some water (or some oat milk if you’re feeling fancy) and you’re nutriented-up for the foreseeable. My brother didn’t think much of the idea, talking about how the body digests food differently to how it processes water, that surely most of those nutrients must get pissed out like they do when you take vitamins, and how I must get that whole hating cooking thing off of Mum ‘cos he loves it.
But just think of the time you’d save. It’s true there can be something relaxing about cooking: sitting at the kitchen window on a sunny day while the sauce bubbles on the hob, smoking a cigarette out the window and drinking a cup of tea, taking pride in the dish you’re making. But those two hours I spent slicing vegetables with my ‘soul classics’ playlist on could have been spent wandering around the park in the sun, or at the gym, or reading a book, or properly listening to the music I had on without getting distracted, activities all of which I find more fulfilling than heating up plants and shoving them in my gob. And anyway, after you’ve eaten, the feeling of being full, or overfull as I usually am (my eyes are bigger than my stomach) isn’t a particularly enjoyable one; it’s the process of eating while you’re really hungry which is satisfying, and at that point anything is tasty. Why else is Burger King so popular?
Mentioning Burger King brings me to my next point: that it’s a privilege to be able to spend a lot of time cooking healthy, tasty meals, and one I’m more than happy to give up. If you’re a single mum working 15 hours, 5 days a week with two children who expect you to make them dinner every single night when you’re pissed off and absolutely knackered, of course you’re going to get microwave meals that take five minutes rather than fifty; and if you didn’t get taught how to cook while you were young because your dad was out working until stupid o’clock just to make the rent then of course you’re not going to learn how to make a satisfactory meal unless you bring yourself round to it at a later stage. People are too busy making sure they can eat than they are worrying about how much saturated fat is in the crisps they’re buying, and that’s not an exaggeration.
And all that stuff about it being easy to make cheap, healthy meals simply isn’t true. A 2013 study from the Harvard School of Public Health found that on average eating healthily costs $1.50 extra a day, or about $550 more per year for one person. Now imagine a family of four already living dangerously close to or below the breadline (the second being the reality for around 14 million people in the UK), and that extra two grand a year could be the difference between eating and not eating at all, even if it is microwave chips and white bread. Of course, the long term effects of leading an unhealthy life are much more costly for the individual and the state, both in money and in, well, lives — but people who work out their finances week on week aren’t thinking about this; they aren’t able to.
Although with my part-time salary I just barely make it above the breadline threshold in Germany, I don’t feel like this is a problem I have. I do buy fresh fruit and vegetables on a regular basis, and eat out more often than I should (even if my concept of ‘eating out’ is a veggie Döner from the local ‘bab shop). But there are other, more personal problems, like how unethical I feel every time I cook, and how much is actually off limits to me due to my vegetarianism. My girlfriend told me that her pal in Sweden cooked reindeer meat for a date recently. I’ll never get to try reindeer meat, and that makes me sad, even if it is my own choice. And if I did have the opportunity and took it, I’d simply feel guilty, just like I do whenever I eat my tasteless rubbery chicken substitute and remember it’s got eggs in it, or when my housemate (who works as a cook and is really good at it) makes mac n cheese and I’m too weak to say no. I don’t want to feel guilty every time I eat, and I do whenever I cook. Obviously the solution here would be to go vegan and never feel guilty again, but it’s not easy to go vegan. It’s also, again, a privilege: who the hell has the time to think about every single meal they are eating, to make sure it has all the required vitamins, to essentially never eat outside the house again because even in progressive Berlin the vegan options are meagre?
There isn’t exactly a solution to my dilemma. Eating out every day is obviously too expensive, and restaurants aren’t my favourite places in the world, either. (At least when I cook I know exactly what the conditions of my kitchen are and how many people have had their grubby mitts on my chow. (Answer: less than two.)) So I’m going to have to carry on wasting evenings preparing food I don’t care about that ends up barely medium-tasty once I’m finished. Maybe one day I’ll have an epiphany and cooking will become something I love and want to spend my time getting better at. Until then, don’t talk to me while I’m making dinner, because I’ll probably be in a bad mood.
