What do you make when you don’t have to cook?

On the kids being away at camp, divorce, and the merits of giving in

Issue 39: From Sara Kate

It’s that point in the summer where, for some at least, a strange, unsavory feeling may be mixing with the euphoric bliss our culture packages as the standard image of “summer break.” As I scroll through images of my friends' holidays in Italy or their kids cannon-balling into lakes, I wanted to confront some uneasy feelings head on.

This midsummer moment can feel complicated for parents. It does for me. Kids with idle time on their hands can sometimes go a bit wild. For those of us still trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy in our lives having to navigate parenting and all its tasks from rhythmic, expected duties like cooking, to less defined roles like just being available (anyone have a teenager?). Everything can feel caddywompus: maybe they’re sleeping in late, suddenly beds aren’t made, clothes aren’t changed, healthy eating habits slip. It can feel like a lot having these feral animals orbiting us as we try to look professional on Zoom and generally keep our shit together. What are you trying to keep up on? Work? Exercise? Those put off optometry, dental and dermatology appointments you’re still catching up on from the pandemic?

Lately I’ve been thinking about another way this disorientation can show up: when the kids are gone. Maybe they’re at camp for a week (or six) or maybe you’re divorced like I am and your summer schedule switches to big swaths of time without your kids. Because it is my work and my passion, I see a lot through the lens of food. And by food I mean cooking, but I also mean feeding, and eating together. These sacred acts are some of the most important to me, as an individual, and as a parent. So when that part of my job as a mom disappears, I can feel a bit unmoored.

When the kids are gone and you don’t have to feed them, what do you cook? How do you nourish yourself when no one is looking, when you aren’t trying to model best behaviors and good habits. As a single parent, this question looms large for me each summer when my daughter spends a few weeks in a row with her dad. I find myself stretched—in an almost spiritual way—to consider how I feed myself, in all ways, in the absence of my child. 

Years ago when our kids were toddlers, a friend and I started referring to meals on our own, when we just “gave up” as parents, acquiesced to our laziness and our cravings for junk, as “white wine and Cheerios”. It could literally mean white wine and Cheerios (I think it did for her) or popcorn and a G&T (more my style back then), or even skipping dinner. What I loved about the Cheerios image was that many moms (not me) always had a pouch of cereal in their bags at the ready. There was something both triumphant and obscene about having that for dinner.

These moments felt naughty somehow, like a temporary jail break from a routine that usually highlighted how on top of everything we were. By the time I had a child, I had already spent years publicly touting an image that I made everything from scratch, that every meal was balanced and always had something green, that the table was set with intention, and that a hippie-infused blessing was said. So my trashy dinners carried some shame.

But last night as I sat on my porch, alone, having said good-bye to my daughter (now almost sixteen) for almost three weeks, dirt still under my fingernails from weeding my messy garden, munching salt and vinegar potato chips and a bitters and soda for dinner, I realized something important. These nights are not failures, but rather they are restorative. They are calming and just enough. In the absence of the focus of my job as Chief Nourisher, I needed not to maintain some level of impressive showmanship around food, but rather I needed to veg-out (without vegetables) and be less busy. 

I’d really love to hear what you cook when you don’t have to cook. Maybe you go full-out and cook more intensely as a way to cope with the solitude of a quiet house. Maybe you eat nothing. Tell me. I get it. I get it all.