My relationship with food

Been thinking a lot about food lately.  Mostly it’s been in an “oh god, get it away from me” sort of way, but also how my whole life with food has completely changed, and how it’s kind of interesting. 

Because of how sick I’ve felt, of course, all normal meals have been temporarily suspended.  Now it’s all about just shoving random food down my throat at any hour of the day or night when I suddenly have the urge, because I just have to eat when I can stomach it, with zero regard to its balance or nutritional value, or how much of it I’ve already eaten that day, or how long it’s been sitting out going stale.  Don’t care.  Food is food, and I need to just eat when I can, because one thing I’ve learned is not eating makes everything far worse.

Everything around my kitchen looks different.  Instead of large pots, frying pans, and sauce pans on the drying rack, I have a pathetic collection of small bowls and spoons and lots of glasses – I’ve done zero cooking, and have only eaten tiny half-portions of things.  I miss planning meals and cooking.  The idea of cutting onions or chopping garlic right now – ugh.  And that’s something I did nearly every day before.  I love to cook, love to watch a random collection of vegetables and starches and proteins become a meal I can enjoy for a few days.  But that’s all over now.  I eat nothing but snacks.  Crackers, cottage cheese, rice cakes, string cheese, canned soup at best.  I never had prepared foods in the house before, and I don’t particularly like them (canned soups are too salty and full of cornstarch) but it’s all I can manage right now, and the vegetable soups are the only way I’m getting any vegetables.  Personally I can’t WAIT to get back to cooking, planning meals, going to the farmer’s market, all that fun stuff that’s normally a huge part of my life.  Hopefully this joy will return to me in a few weeks.

As a side note, one thing I look forward to having a kid for is so I can start baking again.  I absolutely LOVE baking pies from scratch, cakes, muffins, popovers, biscuits, bread, etc etc, but stopped years ago when I realized if I continued to make these things I’d gain about 100 pounds.  But when there’s a kid around, it’s open season, especially when he/she can take stuff to school.  So, looking forward to that development!

So my normally sparse cabinets with only some glass jars full of beans and oats are now full of individually wrapped environmentally unfriendly kid size snack portions of things, my sink is full of tiny bowls and spoons, and I throw out half of what I make because I can never eat a whole anything.  There has been more waste going on around here than I ever thought possible, and it drives me nuts (being of the clean plate school) but I recognize I need to just get over it.  I know when there’s a kid around there will be tons of waste and uneaten meals, too.  Probably a good time to start composting.

Since my body hasn’t changed at all, I suppose this one big change in my life is one way to get used to all the changes coming up.  And I’m down with it, don’t worry.  I signed up for this.  As I complained to my bandleader when I was so sick during our gig last night (survived it, but barely) – he jokingly said, “and to think, you did this TO YOURSELF.”  And he’s right; in no situation has that ever been more true, that this was an entirely personal and autocratic decision. 

Which brings me to my final point.  I was thinking yesterday, for how rotten I feel, how different it is that a) yes, I did it to myself, and b) had some struggles to get to this point, so it’s something I really really wanted.  Just think about all the women who are pregnant who DON’T want to be – young girls, women in teetering relationships, women whose birth control failed, women who were attacked.  Just imagine for one minute feeling like this for weeks on end for a baby you don’t want, didn’t plan, and aren’t looking forward to meeting.  Wow!  Just reading the “Single Parents” thread on the Pregnancy WTE app you see all of the possible scenarios (this thread is not actually for single mothers by choice as I’d hoped – it’s all women in horrible situations with exes, soon to be exes, etc), I think about these women’s pregnancies and how fraught with misery and regret they are, and how horrible that must be for them.  I mean, my worst problem is just surviving this sickness (which I will), and then making those milestones that prove I have a healthy baby going, which is stressful but everyone experiences that.  Can’t even imagine the pain of a cheating spouse or uninvolved dad – blech.  So, as always, things could be worse than being offended I have to eat canned soups!!!