Hi! I’ve been pretty burnt out the past few weeks. As it goes with posting anything on social media, I started feeling the pressure of my blog. This internal pressure that I put on myself to post every week and illustrate something every week. It took the creativity out of me. So I took a break. Today, I’m back to talk about my feelings towards food and cooking. Side note, today’s illustration has nothing to do with what I’m going to talk about. It’s a quick doodle of a cute lil ramen bowl that I did because I got too tired of thinking what to draw. Enjoy!

My Stress Eating Habits in Grad School

I had a conversation with my best friend recently where we talked about how cooking delicious and nutritious food for ourselves is a sign of self-love. When we were in grad school together, we were so caught up in the immense stress of research that we weren’t really being mindful of what we ate. We would have long days (and oftentimes nights) in the lab and we barely had the energy to order groceries, let alone cook. I still did it though, but I was mostly in survival mode. I cooked large batches of pasta or fried rice once a week, which lasted 3-4 meals and I would order food online the rest of the time. At my worst, I ordered family size buckets of fried chicken that had 10 pieces and I would ration that out throughout the week and have it with rice only, no veggies. My friend and I would order burgers, fries and even ice cream after as a treat for working so hard that day, except it was almost everyday. We were stuck in the loop of stress eating and feeling sick.

Fixing My Relationship with Food and Cooking

After I graduated and moved in with my sister, I took the time to fix my relationship with food. I focused on eating healthier with the necessary macronutrients and slowly that led to me cooking occasionally for us. As I became more mindful of the kinds of food that actually made me feel good rather than what I thought would be good after a long day (fries and burgers), I wanted to cook more. I began cooking various Bengali dishes as I was reminded of those that my mum would make such as kali jeera bhorta (black seed mash), shutki torkari (dried fish curry) with kathaler bichi (jackfruit seeds) and plenty others. I learnt that Bengali food is not complicated to make at all. They use variations of the same group of spices but mostly similar cooking styles across categories. For example, bhortas (mashed dishes) include the main ingredient with the addition of dried red chilli, mustard oil, salt, fried garlic and onions, and coriander leaves. Curries include combinations of bay leaves, cardamoms, cinnamon, turmeric, cloves, cumin and coriander powders. I also learnt that the flavor of each dish was heavily contributed by the main ingredients used such as chicken, prawns, beef, etc. Sometimes when I crave food from home, I make these while knowing that they are pretty healthy (while oily, I use avocado oil to make it healthier).

Cooking is a Labor of Love

The more I cooked for myself, the more I realized that cooking is such an amazing form of self-love. We spend time planning out our meals, buying ingredients from the store and preparing the meal itself to make sure we don’t reach a mealtime with nothing to eat. We have always heard of people loving to cook for others as a form of expressing their care and love for others but oftentimes we neglect our own bodies. Similar to when we practice kindness towards others but find it difficult to be kind to ourselves when we are going through difficult days. A lot of us also tend to neglect our food in the same way. We subconsciously think that we should eat something quickly or just eat whatever so that we can go back to work or even forgetting to eat when we are so engrossed in work. Of course, a lot of other factors play a huge role such as affordability and time. Which is why cooking doesn’t always have to be a complex dish that takes 5 hours to make. It can be a simple rice bowl with tuna and cucumbers or something that you can put together in less than an hour. My point is, whether you are assembling a few ingredients into a salad bowl or stewing something for hours, as long as you are mindful about it and make it with the intention of nourishing your body, to me that counts as self-love. For both my friend and I, cooking became a checkpoint in our healing journeys that reminded us that we are in a much better mental space than we were 2 years ago. Of course, when some days do get difficult, I gravitate towards some unhealthy options, but I let myself do that once in a while! Balance is key and it is difficult to constantly be mindful about every single meal. When I compare myself to a year ago, I realized I have learnt how to cook so many different foods this year that I don’t think I will every have to worry about what to serve guests in my house in future! Now I’m curious, what meals do you cook for yourself that makes you feel loved and nourished? Please share your thoughts in the comments because I’d like to know!

Love, Noor ❤