Self-Care and Creativity Through Cooking
With the future feeling unstable and murky, I turn to the world of cooking (and the World at large) to find ways to focus my attention towards creativity and away from the anxiety of the unknown.
I’m sitting at my kitchen island, listening to Scarlet snore away, and typing this post. I’m also listening to “The House of R” podcast as Joanna and Mallory give their take on the finale of “The Penguin”, the HBO Max series that just finished on Sunday. I highly recommend it.
Today is Friday, November 15. Ten days post-election and nine days into the shock and awe that most of knew was coming in 2025 if the election went in the direction it did. For seven of those nine days, I’ve been glued to my phone, constantly looking at the updates that are coming in fast and frequently. None of them feel good, and I was in desperate need to stop myself from refreshing my browser. For the last two, I’ve been able to reduce my consumption of news by sheer force of will. I needed to find a distraction. A project. Something that not only focuses my attention from what feels terrible to what feels better. Many times, that winds up being cooking.
I’ve been cooking for a long time, and don’t mind saying that I am pretty good at it. I’ve also been an on-again, off-again searcher for creative outlets, normally working in very productive and enthusiastic spurts followed by periods of inactivity and lethargy.
I had a productive spurt earlier this year which was derailed by an extended bout of vertigo (not fun) and work stress (also not fun) that started mid-summer. Now that I feel like the vertigo has cleared, and the work stress has lessened (a tiny bit), I feel myself turning back to more creative pursuits. I have also given myself the grace to accept that I am not always feeling creative, and forcing myself to create, or piling guilt on myself for not creating in my extra time is counter-productive and self-sabotaging. But with the anxiety, fear, and sadness I am feeling after the election, I am finding that I am feeling more attracted back to some of these creative pursuits like this Substack.
My one creative outlet that never goes away is cooking. Maybe that’s because, as the saying goes, “you can’t not eat.” Cooking has always been a way for me to destress, even after the end of a long day. I enjoy trying new recipes, especially from different cultures.
In 2023, I had a big idea to keep me engaged with writing and a creative outlet. It was a daily task I gave myself that was supposed to be a one year assignment. I lasted about halfway through the year. Maybe I’ll pick it up again in the new year. But for today, my next big idea is also something to keep me engaged for the entire year, but with a little less pressure, connected to the one thing that I never seem to tire of, and something that maybe will make feel a little better about the new world we are about to face in a couple of months.
The other night, after a particularly distressing news day, I tried a recipe from a book* I bought a few months ago and it gave me an idea. What if I were to try new recipes from around the world from A-Z and write about it. I’d already made a handful of posts on my “Let’s Eat” column, and the math seemed to work: 52 weeks in a year divided by 26 letters in the alphabet ends up at 2 letters/countries a month. Maybe I can find 26 new recipes - two a month - to make and write about.
If nothing else, it would give me a structured goal attached to an activity I loved and would give me an opportunity to learn about cuisines from 26 other countries so I didn’t have to focus on what was happening in my own.
So that’s the creative goal I’ve set for myself for 2025. Will I make it? Who knows. Do I want to, yes, I do. I have six weeks to plan out my calendar, my countries, and my recipes. Will anyone see any of this? Not sure, but I kind of don’t care. This is not only a creative outlet for me, but a form of self-care as we head into this year’s holiday season and 2025. If you’re reading this, thank you. May you find your own distraction if you need one.
*The recipe I made was Apricot and Prune Chicken Stew, or Aloo Mosama, from the book “The Saffron Tales” by Yasmin Khan. It was delicious. (I added the string beans).
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