I wish I liked to cook. Some people look at recipes and see them as delicious opportunities, but when I look at them, I just see WORK. Not only the work that goes into the actual recipe, but all the advanced planning of going to the store to buy ingredients (often an adventure with three kids along), timing everything perfectly, making the actual meal, and then the dreaded clean-up. Cooking is work. It does not make me happy.
It took many years for me to admit that I don’t like to cook. As a woman – more importantly, as a Southern woman – cooking is expected. If you are a good wife and mother, you are supposed to be comfortable in the kitchen. Southern women love with food. In fact, they do everything with food – celebrate, grieve, love, comfort, fellowship, distract, raise money, etc. So I kept thinking that someday this love of cooking would just “kick in” and I would enjoy preparing meals for my family, contributing to bake sales, taking homemade dishes to people instead of frozen lasagna. But I’m sorry to say, nothing has “kicked in” so I fully embrace this deficiency. My name is Tamson, and I don’t like cooking.
My only source of inspiration for cooking comes from my kids. They love to be in the kitchen, chopping and mixing and measuring. I want to foster their love of cooking, so I’m willing to cook for their enjoyment. I can see it differently when I cook with them – it’s good family time, they learn cooperation, they learn how to follow instructions, they learn math and science. And if I’m being honest, I hope, if I train them well enough, by the time they are in middle school, Momma won’t have to cook. I could tell you that I want my children to be responsible and self-sufficient, but the truth is, I secretly desire that they will love cooking so I won’t have to do it anymore!
Last Christmas, my Bible study group did a “Yankee Swap” and I got a “scary” cookbook with long ingredient lists for recipes like “Fennel Leek Soup,” “Rhubarb Sorrel Crisp,” or “Winter Borscht.” My friends oooh’d and aaah’d over the mysterious sounding recipes while I felt the need to buy a companion book called “Weird Ingredients For Dummies.” Needless to say, I traded the cookbook. Several years ago, I went through my recipes and threw out anything that had bizarre ingredients, too many steps, etc. It was freeing! Letting go of who I am “not” helped me embrace more of who I am.
I have friends who have started food blogs recently. My favorite is by a friend from church who keeps it real and makes recipes that look amazing but also doable, even for the cooking-challenged like myself (I’m attaching her link at the end of this blog in case you want to check it out). I read her blog even though I don’t like cooking because she writes about more than just cooking, and I keep hoping her passion for cooking will somehow inspire me to maybe like cooking, a little.
When someone is passionate about something, it makes you pay attention, even if you don’t share that passion. Passion and enthusiasm are contagious, so I love surrounding myself with people who are in their element and enjoying life.
There are times I feel an old pang of guilt or a feeling of insecurity about my dislike for cooking, but those feelings are fleeting. God just hasn’t wired me that way. We all have different gifts and abilities and passions. I am in awe of my cooking-loving friends (and my gardening friends, my organizing friends, my marathon-running friends, my sewing and quilting friends, my artistic friends – all the beautiful friends in my life that have passions I do not share, but I completely admire).
Life is too short to try to be something we are not.
Max Lucado wrote a book called Cure for the Common Life: Living In Your Sweet Spot and it was a wonderful reminder that we are unique creations of God, designed to bring honor and glory to Him in everything that we do.
Put a pen, a book, a camera, or a microphone in my hand, and I’m as happy as a pig in slop. Put a pan, a scary cookbook, a knife, or a mystery vegetable in my hand, and I’m irritated.
My husband tells me all the time, “God doesn’t give any one person everything.”
Galatians 6:4 (the Message translation) says, “Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.”
Don’t you just love that? Isn’t it freeing to know that you don’t have to be anyone else? God loves us, wants us to find our God-given passions and abilities and then revel in it, immerse ourselves in who God created us to be. As Max Lucado said, “Exploring and extracting your uniqueness excites you, honors God, and expands his kingdom.”
I might not bring God very much glory in the kitchen, but I can be out in the world, planting, watering, harvesting, with the hope that I am pointing people to the feast waiting for them at God’s table . . . a feast that God, in His wisdom, chose someone else to prepare, who did it with passion and creativity. I will happily work in God’s fields as someone else happily works in God’s kitchen. And at the end of the day, we all just hope to hear “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:21)
Here is Bethany Dattolo’s cooking blog, if you want to check it out: http://bethanysmeals365.blogspot.com
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I’m so glad to hear I’m not the only one that does not love cooking! 🙂 As much as my mom loves to cook (and being a Southern girl myself) I always felt a little neglected not getting the “cooking gene.” Love this and will remember it when I’m living my God-given passions. And eating something with only 3 ingredients…
Way to go girl! There is nothing better than acknowledging your short-comings and just doing what you are gifted to do. My theory has always been that if what you are doing does not bring you joy and the abundant life then for God’s sake do something else. Thanks for being open, honest and possibly helping others not to be so tied to other people’s gifts, expectations that results in feeling guilty for not being like others. I am so thrilled that God loves me as I am, because I do not think I would enjoy life trying to live like someone else expects me to live. Love you bunches.