I Am Retiring from Cooking

After 35 years and 10,000 family meals, I quit!

Since I first got married about 35 years ago, I’ve prepared literally thousands and thousands of family meals and I’m tired of it. Thirty-five years is as long as many people’s careers so I am now officially retiring from cooking, hanging up my pots and throwing in the dishtowel.

Cooking meals every day for your family belongs in its own special category of marital and parental obligations. My husband and I have a traditional division of labour at home which I think is typical of couples our age (I’m a Generation X, he’s a Boomer). When I chat with girlfriends and acquaintances about retiring from cooking, the majority of the time they respond with, “Oh yes, for sure! I’m tired of being responsible for the meal planning, shopping and cooking.” Exactly. It’s one of those things that seems to fall on our shoulders most of the time. I wonder what would happen if all midlife women went on cooking strikes? Our partners and kids would surely not starve; they’d have to step up and figure it out.

I do have a few friends whose husbands undertake the meal planning and cooking or they prepare meals together and I tell them they don’t know how lucky they are. But I’m pretty sure they’re an exception to the rule. Other women like my sister-in-law love to cook and bake and putter in the kitchen — it’s her “thing” — she doesn’t consider it a chore, although I know she enjoys a night out at a restaurant as much as I do. I remember one of my aunts used to love to entertain; it was called ‘Reservations!’.

At this point in life my ultimate fantasy would be to have a private chef come to our house and prepare dinner every evening. I know it’s not going to happen unless we win the lottery but one can dream.

Some people don’t like doing the laundry or vacuuming or changing bed sheets but those chores never bothered me. It’s the cooking that I found to be more drudgery than enjoyment. I really can’t explain why. My mom and grandmother were both good cooks and I tried to follow their example. I can actually whip up a pretty decent meal but perhaps it’s because I was a single mom for 15 of the past 35 years with three little people depending on me every day. Making meals was just another task on my daily ‘to do’ list and there was no other adult around to share that responsibility. Just like preparing the kids’ lunches every morning, I got into a dinnertime routine and tried not to over-think it. What was the point? I just got on with it, like the British say.

It helped that I am an organized person but sometimes I would forget to defrost the meat before leaving for work in the morning and I’d have to endure the kids asking me when dinner would be ready while the meat defrosted in the microwave. And they wondered why I would be standing in the kitchen with a glass of wine in my hand…

Inevitably, I rotated between preparing some favourite recipes we all liked and once in awhile, trying a new dish. If it bombed, I took it out of rotation. I insisted we sit down together as a family for dinner as often as possible and talk about our day. However, when the kids got older and started playing organized sports it became an even crazier rush to get home after work, make a quick supper and get the kids to the pool for swimming lessons or to the soccer field which was sometimes at a nearby facility and sometimes clear across the city. I look back now and wonder how the heck did I do that on my own for years on end?

During the time I was a single parent money was tight so take-out and restaurant meals were limited to special occasions. When you’re four people the bill adds up. My big splurge for the week was heading over to the video store with the kids on Friday night to rent a couple of movies then cooking a frozen pizza at home. When the kids went to their father’s on certain weekends and during vacation periods, I was off cooking duty and would enjoy going out to a restaurant with girlfriends or sometimes, with a guy on a date.

As my kids got older, I got them involved in the dinner prep and taught them the basics of cooking. Knowing how to feed yourself is a basic life skill everyone should learn, in my humble opinion. Our sons certainly cook a lot more than my brothers ever did at their age. In fact, our four adult children can put a good meal together from scratch which gives me a sense of satisfaction. Fortunately, gender roles are less rigid with Millenials and that’s a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say. The kitchen is no longer assumed to be solely the woman’s domain; progress is slow but it’s happening.

My husband and I have a traditional arrangement, as I mentioned earlier, and it works for us. When we got married ten years ago, we blended our families so that meant I had to prepare meals for him and two young men every night and for a time, we had three sons living at home. (My daughter had already moved out). You can imagine how much food they ate. Our fridge and pantry were raided at all hours of the day and night. Fortunately, I was able to retire shortly after remarrying so I had the time to cook but it was still more of a chore than something I enjoyed doing. Again, I don’t begrudge it but I’m glad those days are over.

Two years ago when we became empty-nesters, cooking moved way down my list of priorities. I feel like I did my duty of feeding a family for long enough and I’m done with that phase of life. I’m into the “me” years of midlife now and there are so many other ways I want to spend my time.

At my insistence, we tried a meal kit service for more than a year which took the menu planning and shopping out of the equation — a good thing when the pandemic hit — but we got tired of the meals and our kitchen always seemed to be a mess of dirty pots and pans. Encouraged by business groups, we regularly ordered take-out and delivery from local restaurants to help them stay afloat during the COVID lockdowns. It was our civic duty and a win-win situation for women everywhere, especially those juggling working from home and childcare. (They have my utmost sympathy, and I’ll admit to being thankful every day that I’m in midlife and retired.)

Beyond barbecuing and making a tasty Greek salad, my husband will admit he wasn’t born to wear an apron although he does most of the grocery shopping which is great. He is self-sufficient and doesn’t complain when I tell him, “You’re on you’re own tonight, I’m not cooking.”(I think he knows better than to complain). He’ll make one of his “go-to” meals of grilled cheese and tomato soup or beans and weiners while I make myself a tuna salad. Simple and easy. Basically, we’ve adopted the free-flowing eat-when-you’re-hungry-drink-when-you’re-dry philosophy and it works fine for us. We’ve both lost weight, in fact, due to eating smaller casual meals; an added bonus after putting on the pandemic pounds in 2020.

A friend of mine told me she knows a couple in her neighbourhood who go out to eat three times a day. I was incredulous. Then I began to admire that woman for taking culinary retirement to a whole new level. Impressive.

During this transition to a more casual way of eating, I will sometimes make an effort to make a ‘proper’ sit-down dinner — if the mood strikes. Frankly, I’m embarassed to admit how often we’ve eaten infront of the television in the past couple of years. Part of it was due to world events like the global pandemic, the 2020 U.S. election, then a certain President’s attempted coup and subsequent Impeachment trial which had us glued to the tube for days on end in the dead of winter. We also did way too much binge-watching on the various streaming services like most people who were locked down at home. Now that society has opened up, we have begun to entertain other couples with summer barbecues again and that’s been a lot of fun.

Iknow that retiring from cooking is a First World privilege and I’m grateful that we have so many more options than women of previous generations.

Indeed, I can order a fully cooked meal and a bottle of wine through an app on my phone and have it delivered right to our door within the hour. Here’s to progress and culinary retirement. Bon appétit!

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