Hi everyone. As many of you know, I have started a business called “Take back the Kitchen” where I help women (and men if they are so inclined) overcome psychological obstacles to cooking. I will be making use of my background as a therapist and my experience in the kitchen in both group seminars and individual, hands-on sessions.
There are so many competent and intelligent women out there who excel in many or most of their endeavors but when it comes to cooking it’s a whole other ballgame. Many of us become frustrated, annoyed, resentful, or stressed out and just give up when it comes to creating healthy and tasty meals for ourselves and our families. There are individual, unique reasons for our struggles but some very common ones as well. Some of the more common reasons for our limited interest in pursuing a home cooking career even if it is something we truly desire is fear of failure. Another is a Type A, perfectionist personality. Another may be that we fear becoming a boring suburban housewife a la 1950s stereotype. It is very easy to order in, take out or buy prepared foods in any supermarket so why bother?
Anybody have any thoughts or stories to share about your struggles?
4 Responses
This is the aspect of my mothering that I’m pretty sure my children will talk about endlessly in therapy: I loathe cooking, hate dealing with dinner especially–I work full-time and I’m TIRED at that hour of the day–and can count on one hand the number of times I’ve made an elaborate sit-down meal for my family that provides all the food groups and involves niceties like cloth napkins and proper beverages. I also have zero food imagination, so can never just look at what’s in the refrigerator and come up with something anyone would want to eat. My new year’s resolution, in fact, is to actually THINK about dinner before the minute I step in the house at 6 pm.
As you can see, I’m a desperate case, probably worst than most. We subsist on take-out, my husband’s cooking (though he gets home late several nights a week), or dishes that are less cooked than assembled, like “burritos” with already-shredded cheese and refried beans out of a can rolled into a flour taco.
It’s sad. I throw myself on your mercy.
Katherine
Alma, thanks for having this blogsite. I usually cook at home but always found it stressful during the week. I get home at a reasonable hour but my husband commutes from NYC by car. I was always juggling to have things ready when he walked in the door, not knowing when that would be. One day out of nowhere I realized that he is not starving the minute that he comes in the door and acutally likes some down time to relax. Now cooking is more fun
Alma, Congratulations on your site!!!! It’s awesome! A truly needed service. I’m so happy for you and I know you’ll make a BIG success of this!!!
Ariane
Love the concept of your site/company. It made me think of the fact that I’ve lived in my apartment for six years and always ate dinner, with or without my husband, in front of the tv. Well we recently bought a new dining table and now we always sit there to eat, and no longer watch tv during dinner. I’ll admit, I still eat in front of the tv when I’m alone. This has given us a whole new perspective on family time – we catch up and talk and make the meal last upwards of an hour, whereas it used to be a rushed meal while watching crappy reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Food really brings people together, but in my case, a new dining room table brought us much closer together.