When I was 9, I cooked my brother and sister a recipe from a kid’s cookbook I had. Some kind of English muffin pizza thing that my brother (age 3) told me was disgusting. I wept at the criticism.
Thankfully, the meal I made for my birthday lunch turned out a lot better. We sat for hours dipping dill rolls in a lemony shrimp and white bean stew, drinking decaf coffee with our cupcakes, heavy with buttercream.
I wanted to write something beautiful about the role of the oldest daughter and the pleasure I’ve always found in cooking, one that began with cooking for my family.
Instead, as my birthday came and went, all I could think about was time. How quickly it was passing, mostly, but also – how to spend it? In pursuit of what, exactly?
Cooking isn’t only a hobby for me – it’s my favourite procrastination tool, along with cleaning. If I’m on a deadline, my bathroom is sparkling and my fridge is full of prepped meals. And my word doc is a scattered mess of quotes and half-baked ideas.
When creating art feels impossible – when I cry after a mic and vow to quit comedy, when I struggle to pick up my notebook and pen, when I feel like I’ll never have an idea again – I can always create in the kitchen. It comes much more naturally to me now than art does. Perhaps it’s the confines of a recipe giving me some structure to be creative within. Perhaps it’s the physicality of cooking and baking. Perhaps it’s just that I only ever share it with people I love – there is no clique of bakers I wish I could impress or whispering group of home cooks in my kitchen making me paranoid about my abilities. Cooking is an intimate gesture.
Regardless of why, lately it’s been a lot easier to whip up something in the kitchen than to write.
A year ago, I was talking with a friend at a show. She’s a comedian as well as a musician, and I wondered how she balanced both, along with her full time job.
“Isn’t it so hard doing both? Having two different creative pursuits?”
“Not really,” she said. “It’s like anything you do. You just make time.”
I wanted her to validate my own low expectations of myself, tell me I was spread thin and it wasn’t my fault I always felt insufficiently committed. I wanted her to say it was hard to balance two passions. But to her, it wasn’t. It was a matter of making art a priority.
The more I reflected on it, the more I thought that the question just below the surface of our conversation was, what else do you make time for in your life? Trying new recipes, planning dates, laughing with a friend over glasses of natural wine and stacks of sourdough and cheese. I always manage to find time for these things – why does art feel so different? Where did it acquire all this extra weight? Why did I load it with extra meaning? Why does food remain so easy to pick up?
Maybe it’s just that food is easy. It serves a clear purpose. Even if the recipe doesn’t turn out, well, at least you got some protein and carbs. At least there’s the next meal. If no one laughs at my set, what was the point? Do I have to wring some lesson from the experience to find it worthwhile?