Mommies Make Meals

When I moved out of my parents’ house at the age of 19, my mom handed me her copy of The I Hate To Cook Book by Peg Bracken and wished me good luck. You see, she was a great cook but got stuck with a daughter that refused to learn from her. I liked eating her food, but had zero interest in recreating it on my own. I went out in the world knowing how to cook exactly two things (spaghetti and French toast), and basically lived off of fast food, pizza and Mexican take-out for a number of years. Even when I landed a job at Whole Foods Market in my early twenties, I didn’t use my 20% discount towards amazing ingredients to create delicious meals, I just lived off of little frozen lasagnas and stuff from the prepared foods department or salad bar. And that was on a good night. In reality, a lot of the time I ate spicy green beans and beer for dinner at a local bar with my friends. Cook for myself? Nah, I’m good. I’ll be the one heating up a Hot Pocket at 7-11 for breakfast.

Fast forward to when I met the guy who would eventually become my husband. We enjoyed a few years of goofing off in our mid-to late-twenties before we decided it was time to grow up a little and stop eating at Burger King all the time. He acquired a great cookbook called How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman, which-as the name implies-has a huge variety of recipes, that are fairly simple and well explained. We tentatively dipped a toe into cooking for ourselves (i.e. something other than my spaghetti, or pork chops, which is all he knew how to make) and gradually gained more confidence. Soon we were even brave enough to make chicken, like a couple of different kinds! Ahhh, it was an exciting time. I wouldn’t exactly classify us as foodies as of yet, but we were beginning to elevate our cooking game, slowly but surely. I was poring over our little collection of cookbooks, and printing out recipes from the internet then hole-punching them into a binder. It was like an OG analog Pinterest. Yes, I still have the binder to this day. Please don’t touch it.

And then all the crappy eating habits and partying of my twenties caught up with me, and I gained a bunch of weight. The fact that we were cooking some meals for ourselves was a great start, but we weren’t overly concerned with making healthy food, and we still ate out quite a bit. I was too stubborn to just “go on a diet,” so I started doing some research and became obsessed with reading all about health, nutrition and balanced eating. This led me to lose 40 pounds and to pursue a degree in foods and nutrition. Game changer. Now I was not only becoming a devout foodie, but I was surrounded by other foodies who loved eating food, cooking food, and learning all about food. Between classes, studying and internships, I was shopping at farmer’s markets and health food stores, and teaching myself to become a pretty decent little home cook if I don’t say so myself. I was all: Oh, let's try this new kind of vegetable, we should learn how to make different types of ethnic foods, and maybe we can start doing meatless Mondays! My husband-a North Carolina native and pork enthusiast-was very patient. And also somewhat concerned at the changes in our diet. He wasn’t the only one. My classmates and I were all going through the same phase, and the people in our lives were our guinea pigs. “Why can’t you just make normal food?” they asked. I tried not to go too far over the cliff, but I was having fun. And I was transforming from someone who hated cooking into this new person who not only found it fun, but relaxing, and even therapeutic to create a meal from scratch.

And then…I had a kid, and all bets were off. Now instead of long, leisurely cooking sessions, seasoning and tasting with music playing and a nice glass of wine, I was scarfing down whatever I could eat with one hand while holding my infant with the other. When we did attempt to eat at the table like we used to, the soundtrack was a crying baby who was positively outraged that we chose to feed ourselves instead of doting on her non-stop as we slowly starved to death. I thought being half Catholic and half Jewish meant I truly had a firm grasp on the concept of guilt. Nope. Not even close. There is nothing that compares to Mom Guilt. And now-along with everything else on earth-that included feeling bad about taking time to replenish some of the calories that I was burning at a record pace now that I was a living refrigerator. And taking time to enter my beloved culinary flow state? Ha! Those days were over. Trader Joe’s heat and eat was as fancy as it got, and we were lucky I managed to make that happen. Andrea, I will never forget the day you brought me tuna salad and egg salad and saved my life. Love you, girl. When my daughter was six months old, I wrote a hilarious post called"Chewing For Dear Life" that chronicled that insane chapter of my life.

Don’t worry, I did eventually get back into cooking. Sorta. Like, it was still kind of quick and harried, but sheer hunger and stubbornness got me through. I really wanted to make food for myself and my family, but it was just…different. Now my child was older and had grown teeth, and developed a deep distrust of any food outside the chicken nugget, cracker and yogurt realm. They say “fed is best” so <ahem> she ate a lot of nuggets for a few years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know about division of responsibility, and that I was supposed to be devoting myself to transforming her into a brave little trooper at the dinner table. But over the years food had become my love language, so arguments and tears around feeding were repugnant to me. My worst fear was that she would ever go hungry. I didn’t say it was totally rational, but that’s how I felt. So nuggets it was. Eventually I got braver, and so did she. She learned to withstand samples of the grown-up’s dinner alongside trusted stand-by foods. She eventually let her guard down and figured out that mommy’s food was actually pretty good, and wasn’t out to get her. She still gets a little suspicious when something new hits her plate, but will grudgingly give it a try. And is open to admitting that it was indeed, yummy.

The older my daughter got, and the more confident I became in my gastronomic skills, the more I was willing and able to experiment in the kitchen. I began to have fun with cooking again. I was getting faster and better at coming up with stuff on the fly. Yay! I mean, there were definitely days where I was frustrated by a lack of enthusiasm from my dinner companions, or-God forbid-sometimes I didn’t even like my own dinner. Often, I would be stuck in a rut, and get sick of making the same old shit, or just simply didn’t feel like coming up with a menu. Sometimes I just want dinner to magically appear in front of me, and not have anything to do with it. Restaurants and take-out help with that, and of course, my husband does cook fairly regularly, so I’m not crying in my beer over being this put-upon chef. Most of the time I’m cool with feeding us, and would kind of rather you stay the hell out of my kitchen, thanks. But, you can’t be excited about anything all the time, and making food is no exception. I know I’m not the only one.

When I was a new mom, I joined a mom’s club. If you don’t know what that is, look it up. As someone new to town who didn’t know anyone else with a child the same age as mine, or really anyone for that matter, it was a life saver. Being a stay at home mom can sometimes be a lonely business, so I was thrilled to have found people to talk to, and for my child to play with. The other moms and I talked about everything. Our kids, our partners, mom fails and wins, and cooking came up quite a bit as well. My friend Barbie and I used to commiserate about feeding our families. She was not exactly enthused about cooking in general, but the experience of putting dinner on the table and receiving lackluster reviews or downright refusals certainly didn’t help. While deep down I still loved to cook, I had similar frustrating experiences. Public service message: Even the simplest meal requires a decent amount of planning, work and care, and it’s a bummer to serve it up to a tough crowd. So if you’re lucky enough to have someone else routinely cooking the lion’s share of your meals for you, smile and nod and show some appreciation! K? <stepping off soapbox> Anyhoo, we were all sharing food pics on our Facebook pages, and Barbie came up with the idea of forming a group where we could share meal photos and recipes that could be easily searched, to help us all experiment with new dinner ideas. Knowing how much I love talking about food, she asked me to be an admin. We called it Mommies Make Meals. Why just moms? Because we wanted to create a space to serve a very specific niche, where we could just be ourselves and-if necessary-vent to a population that knew where we were coming from.

The two of us became like the angel and devil on your shoulder. Love it or hate it, you gotta eat, so eventually you have to cook something. But sometimes you just need a little support and motivation along the way. Cooking can be overwhelming for a lot of people, and we get that. We spread the word that we had created a group for moms to share recipes, get ideas for meal planning, and tap into the knowledge and experience of the group to build our confidence as home cooks. AKA steal other people’s ideas. But like, with permission. It began to take off. We started with a small group of ladies that we knew personally, and over time it began to blossom into something bigger. At present, we have a modest 816 members, but it’s all been word of mouth, and it’s an amazingly eclectic crowd. Our group includes everyone from professional chefs to home cooks, dietitians and nutritionists, people that have been cooking for years and those who are just starting out. But we all have something in common: We are all moms, and we just want to get food in those bellies. I post my meal plan (almost) every Monday, and I do end up (usually) making everything I say I will. We share food memes, ask each other cooking-related questions, and of course, post pics. Sometimes we all kind of get in a rut, and there isn’t a lot of engagement, so Barbie and I try to fill in the gaps with our own stuff. Other times, the feed is full of photos and conversations. Life kind of imitates art in that way. But no matter what, we are here. We love our members, and will always do what we can to encourage, educate, and entertain. If we can do it, so can you. Keep cooking, mamas!