Everything Got Better Once I Stopped Cooking For My Family

I turn away from my husband and his snoring, using my back to try to block out the light from my phone. It is my favorite time of day: 10 p.m., in bed, secretly scrolling my favorite app, NYTimes Recipes. Looking at all the beautiful pictures I feel myself getting excited, hopeful even. I click on family-friendly dinners, and my heart drops instantly: It reads like a list of rejection letters. Fajitas. Chili. Tortellini soup. Lasagna. I swipe, faster and faster, rejecting things left and right (though I still think of left swipe as rejection), and I am reminded of the years I spent swiping on other apps, picky in a different way. Back then, I rejected men for being too square, too edgy, too comfortable with typos. Now I swipe and make the rejections on my children’s behalf: This recipe looks too spicy. Too cheesy. Too saucy. Too meat-y, too bean-y.

It took me years to admit my family, happy in almost every way, would completely implode if asked to live on what the Internet tells me are “Family-Friendly Dinners.” I read other families’ meal plans like other moms read romance novels, fascinated but incredulous, sure no one is being whisked off to Paris or that people’s kids are eating fish tacos in real life.

It wasn’t always this way. For years I persisted, an acolyte in Ellyn Satter’s church of feeding, sure that if I just put certain foods (namely, healthy home-cooked ones) on the table 10, 20, 50, 5,000 times, my kids would eventually be called “good eaters,” Internet code for adventurous, polite, nonpicky dinner companions, basically little 45-year-olds in children’s bodies. But after years of this, years of heroic dinnertime effort met with routine, resounding rejection, it finally happened. I broke.

The scene that played out in our dining room last fall was a familiar one to anyone with kids. I had spent Sunday meal planning the week’s meals, my cookbooks around me on the living room floor, avoiding the allergens (avocado, tomatoes, peppers) and preferences (no broccoli, fish, “saucy” food, spice) of my family members. I’d found some that threaded the very fine needle of food preferences and time allowances I’d have to cook during the week. I grocery shopped, labeled what food should not be eaten before it was made for dinner (“DO NOT TOUCH!” the egg carton said, as they were destined for pad Thai), and got to cooking.

And so, on that night last September, I cooked. Chicken shawarma — a recipe that promised, literally, to “change my life.” I grilled, roasted, and diced. I minced the dill, considered whether to peel the cucumber. (I split the difference, peeling it in strips.) I set the table, our cloth napkins over our placemats, the food all on the table to serve family style (Ellyn Satter insists!!!), and my family sat down. And of course, nobody ate. My husband muscled out a “Thanks for dinner” as my son slid down in his chair, horrified at the very sight of cooked vegetables. My daughter declared she didn’t eat meat. (She does.)

This doesn’t mean I don’t cook ever; I just no longer cook for my family. I save my cooking for other adults.

I did not flip the kitchen table, but only because our dog, Larry, would have immediately made off with the chicken bones, but I did suddenly understand Teresa Giudice in a way I never had before. What was I doing with my one wild and precious life? I loved cooking because it brought people together. And yet my cooking for my family was doing anything but that. We were miserable.

So, I decided I was done. I would no longer cook for my family.

Over the next few days, I came up with my new rule: I would prepare food for my family, but I would not cook. The fine details are such: There are no recipes allowed, whether from a cookbook or online (Bye, NYTimes Recipes! See ya, Smitten Kitchen!!) and food should be prepared in 30 minutes or less. Practically, it means a lot of quesadillas, frozen food (Trader Joe’s frozen aisle is our meal plan for weeks) and pizza. We eat the most basic of tacos (ground turkey, spice packet, pre-shredded cheese). Baked potatoes and bagged salads are go-tos. There are lots of repeat meals.

This doesn’t mean I don’t cook ever; I just no longer cook for my family. I save my cooking for other adults. In fact, the space this no-cooking thing opened up for me inspired me to institute something we call Sunday suppers: a regular time to cook for friends we invite over. At which, of course, my kids eat food that they would normally reject — maybe it’s because they’re surrounded by friends’ children who compliment my pulled pork?

But beyond that, our dinners have now become pleasant. No tables are flipped; no tears are shed onto the scrambled eggs and pancakes we are eating. (Breakfast for dinner is about as fancy as we get now.) My son makes jokes as my daughter tells us the “cuckoo banana pants” thing that happened at school each day. To be clear, we aren’t all eating the same thing. My husband often works late, and I batch cook a big soup or salad for me or us to eat all week alongside the kids. The mealtimes I dreamed of are happening, just over different kinds of food than the fantasy includes.

While here in Seattle anyone filling their grocery cart with frozen food gets a side eye (not only do I not regularly buy organic, I also don’t even garden), I am aware that part of my ability to throw in the towel and say “NO MORE COOKING!” without getting thrown to the Michael Pollan-sponsored wolves is because my kids are white, average weight, healthy, and upper middle class. If any one of those factors was different, the judgment would come quickly. (It might still come, to which I say, “Bring it on. I’ll be over here snacking on my Pizza Rolls.”)

I now know that there are 1,000 ways to be a good mother, where I used to believe “You must do 1,000 things to be a good mother.”

But also, as I’ve stopped cooking for my family, I’ve realized it’s shifted more than how I feel about dinner. It’s true that my children will not remember my cooking. They will not get framed artwork with beloved recipes of mine or have a special dish that they request I make when their children are born or when they are sick. They will, almost surely, look back and wonder why I wasn’t as fastidious about organic food as their friends’ parents. They will likely think I was behind the ball on GMOs, CSAs, and microplastics. If, or when, they get ill, I may wonder if it is my fault.

But not cooking has opened us space for me to be good at parts of mothering I really do like: having neighborhood kids over most afternoons. Snuggleread (a daily practice where me and my kids… lie down and read — highly recommend). Volunteering at their school. I feel like I’ve discovered a crucial, life-changing flaw in my thinking: I now know that there are a thousand ways to be a good mother, where I used to believe “You must do 1,000 things to be a good mother.” In rejecting dinner, I’m rejecting this premise.

Instead, I have found lowering the bar brings me into the relationship I actually want with my kids. Whether it’s giving up on folding laundry, or leaving the dishes to take a bath, when I become human rather than just a mother is when I have a relationship with my family that I like, and one where dinner is enjoyable for all of us.

As I get more confident in my choice, I look at people’s meal plans less. I close the cooking app and open my Kindle instead. I find I’m embracing what life looks like right now (frozen chicken patties) and finding the fantasy of a happy family is closer than I realized, even if it doesn’t include chicken shawarma.