I Don't Know Why #2

"I don’t want to cook anymore, and I don’t know why." The second installment of a new, occasional Oldster Magazine column by bestselling novelist Laura Lippman.

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I don’t want to cook anymore, and I don’t know why.

Until very recently, I enjoyed cooking. I began when I was 10 or 11 with a recipe book for kids, which taught me how to bake brownies and chocolate chip cookies. I also knew how to boil a hotdog.

In college, I added tuna melts, pitas stuffed with ricotta, and deep-dish pizza to my repertoire. I was never a particularly good cook, but I was always a game one. In my 20s, I learned to make yeast breads and rolls. One of my friends once compared me to Julia Child – not in terms of the results, but because of my slapdash process. Things were definitely dropped in my kitchen. But I found pleasure in feeding others and myself.

I became a mom late in life and when my daughter was young, I really started rocking a domestic goddess groove. We were living in New Orleans six months out of the year and I became a devotee of a small, uptown farmers’ market. I learned how to trim and fry a softshell crab. I bought shishito peppers to blister, okra to fry. I made my own cornbread to accompany my downright respectable red beans and rice. For my daughter’s first Hanukkah, I scoured New Orleans for shmaltz (aka chicken fat) and made a perfect heart-shaped latke.

I got high on my own supply of competence. I was the kind of mom who could whip up a batch of cookies two hours before school started from ingredients on hand. I perfected poached eggs, produced pancakes and blinis according to my daughter’s whims, sometimes posting photos to Twitter with the hashtag #IfIWereYourMom. All of this while – stops to count – producing twelve books.

For parties, I had a foolproof approach: better-than-average booze, cheap and nasty snacks. Lipton onion soup dip, queso made with Velveeta, my mother’s garlicky pimento cheese, my Aunt Effie’s salmon ball. On the 4^th of July, I got up early to fry chicken per my sister’s recipe, then served it cold.

I was the kind of mom who could whip up a batch of cookies two hours before school started from ingredients on hand. I perfected poached eggs, produced pancakes and blinis according to my daughter’s whims, sometimes posting photos to Twitter with the hashtag #IfIWereYourMom.

But I don’t want to do any of this now. I don’t want to cook anything. And this is a problem, because, although I gave up dieting six years ago, I try to be conscientious about nourishment. I require a lot from my body. I know it needs vegetables, fiber, and protein, but lately, if I’m alone, I find myself eating a Royal Farms pretzel for dinner.

Luckily, every other week I am responsible for feeding a growing human, my now teenage daughter, and she will not, bless her, make do with a Royal Farms pretzel for dinner. I grill stovetop steaks, I make homemade applesauce, I serve her various kale salads, one with apple and cheese, the other with farro, raspberries, and pistachios. She eats all these things happily and my mother, who bore the cross that was me, a picky eater in my youth, feels I do not deserve this omnivore of a child.

To reiterate: I cook for a delightfully grateful 14-year-old, a girl who says “please” and “thank you” and compliments my most basic pasta dishes, and – I still don’t want to cook anymore.

But, as noted, I ask a lot of my body — daily 5-mile walks, thrice-weekly strength-training sessions, twice-weekly cardio. So I have begun trying to find easy hacks for lunch and dinner. Oven-roasted salmon with cherry tomatoes on the side. Frittatas. Canned white beans with sauteed sausage and wilted greens, one of my perfect poached eggs on top. A whole-wheat tortilla with sauteed spinach, onions, and goat cheese.

Still, I don’t want to do any of this. I don’t want to chop, I don’t want to wash vegetables, I don’t even want to open cans. I’ve been doing it all for so many years, and I’m tired. In the last week’s heat wave, I didn’t even feel like going to the trouble of eating. I wished for a pill that could provide me with three meals a day, something straight out of science fiction or — in a moment of insensitive, indefensible glibness — an IV.

I don’t want to chop, I don’t want to wash vegetables, I don’t even want to open cans. I’ve been doing it all for so many years, and I’m tired. In the last week’s heat wave, I didn’t even feel like going to the trouble of eating. I wished for a pill that could provide me with three meals a day, something straight out of science fiction…

Recently, I was rummaging through my desk and I found a folder of weekly meal planners from the first year of the pandemic, when I was newly separated, yet still preparing meals for my no-longer-family. (The pandemic required us to function as a “pod” even as we were living apart, which was a good thing for the most part.) I took so much pride in those recipes, my ruthlessly efficient weekly shopping trip. God, we ate well from March 2020 into the summer of 2021. David Tanis’s spicy meatballs with chickpeas, Alison Roman’s chicken legs with potatoes and rosemary, turkey meatloaf, Gabrielle Hamilton’s celery toasts, Coronation chicken salad, pissaladière. For the first pandemic Passover, I even made matzoh from scratch.

Was I trying to convince my then-husband that he had made a terrible mistake in leaving me? I think not, because I quickly came to believe he was right to leave me; we are both better off out of that marriage. But there was definitely something performative, a variation on the Enjoli ad of my youth. I brought home some of the bacon, I fried it up in a pan – pancetta is essential to the kale salad with raspberries – and I never let anyone forget that I didn’t need a man.

Do I dislike the cooking, or do I dislike the cleaning that follows? No, it’s just the cooking. (And maybe that as a woman, it’s expected of me?) Cleaning is easy. Tedious and sometimes time-consuming, but easy. Cooking can be easy, too. Tonight, after consulting my eat-the-rainbow-chart – my trainer and I agree that it’s the easiest way for me to hit various nutritional targets – I made a quesadilla with roasted chicken and sautéed red, orange, and yellow peppers, then added some mashed avocado. That, with my lunchtime smoothie (Greek yogurt, frozen blueberries, protein powder and flaxseed), allowed me to check all my boxes for today. And I am all about checking the boxes.

There was definitely something performative, a variation on the Enjoli ad of my youth. I brought home some of the bacon, I fried it up in a pan – pancetta is essential to the kale salad with raspberries – and I never let anyone forget that I didn’t need a man.

The quesadilla was fine. I am fine, despite the ennui this suggests. But yesterday I went to see my sister in the hospital, where she was sent after her most recent fall. My sister has Parkinson’s, which has led to dementia. She was having trouble swallowing, and the snacks I picked out at Royal Farms – along with a pretzel for myself – were strictly forbidden.

She was hooked up to an IV, which made me feel terrible for my heedless, fleeting thought that I would like to take nutrition that way. I pledged to myself that when she is released from the hospital, I will bake for her as I often did when she first entered assisted living almost three years ago. Peanut butter chocolate chip, blondies with nuts and coconut, Coca Cola fudge cake. I will get out my old-fashioned, hard-working Sawa cookie press and make cheese straws from scratch.

But I’m not sure that I’m going to enjoy it.

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Check out the whole series. Previously Laura Lippman also published an essay called Whole 60 on Oldster, and took The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire. She publishes the newsletter Shaved Meats, Piled High.

Beginning July 19th, you can watch Lady in the Lake, a miniseries on Apple TV, based on Laura Lippman’s thriller by the same name.