First I lost my will to cook, and then I lost my cooking confidence. When cooking, it became just me and the pan in the kitchen. The scents did not waft up and engulf me, making me a part of the bigger space of the kitchen. They no longer could guide me to the next step or initiate a sense of anticipation for what I was about to serve and eat. (In fact, I don’t know how long it was before I started cooking for other people again, and I hardly even do it now. So this radically changed something I could do for others. I did bake almost immediately after the surgery, but baking is another story.) And since cooking is a kind of care for oneself and others, I kind of lost track of caring for me. Certainly this extended in all sorts of directions, and it’s not unrelated to my penchant for napping. Yes, penchant.
I bet lots of people could well imagine themselves taking on this task after such a surgery – they’d be well ahead of me in the cooking stuff. That matters and it doesn’t, but it’s true that it takes me a long time to process changes and challenges. I’ve dipped back into cooking – in the same way I’ve dipped back into exercise and yoga, I suppose – but only lately have I made a far more concerted effort to try again. Writing is partly what has kept me accountable in the kitchen (maybe unsurprisingly, since writing was the one thing I kept up after the surgery).
So now I am cooking in my head. All cooks do this to some extent. We imagine a meal, plan for it when we look in the refrigerator or go to the store. We put our ingredients in front of us, make decisions about what goes in the pan first. We think about what the final amalgamation might taste like. But much of that process, I believe, is intuitive. Spicing is often instinctive, sudden, and we test as we go in order to make spontaneous decisions. Cooking in my head is new to me. I almost close my eyes to do it. I have to imagine what it is that I can taste, and what sort of combination might enable multiple sensations.
This past week I went to the market for dinner ingredients. I wanted to make some sort of Eastern European dish that involved onions and sausage (granted, veggie-sausage, there for nutrients and a different texture than for the actual taste of kielbasa, which I can’t entirely approximate anyway). I moved through the store to think of what would blend and complement: I bought a yellow onion, veggie kielbasa, small potatoes, and apples. Though I almost never cook with fruit – I don’t like it soggy – I thought the apples and onions might be quite nice together, sharp and sweet. As I drove home I started imagining what else I would include: white wine, vinegar, mustard. In this process I anticipated smelling it, too. This tumor was in my head. And that’s where I’m cooking now, too.
