Food Is a Love Language (and I Speak It with Myself)

On cooking and eating alone

It’s said that love is stored in the kitchen. I have so many memories that can confirm. Every time I cut fruit, I think of my grandma, who would bring me pear and apple slices as I did my homework on Tuesday afternoons. I think about how she thought about me in the kitchen as she did so, and how I’m doing the same. There is a subconscious thoughtfulness, an innate love that says, in the words of Christopher Citro: I love you. I want us both to eat well.

When I was living at home last year, I loved baking and cooking for my friends and family. I brought a cake to work and made cookies for my sisters and salads for my parents. It’s likely a cultural thing, but I always associated I love you less with the saying of the words themselves and more with the act of handing someone a plate of food. Sometimes I would make a dish I loved but that my family wouldn’t be able to eat for one reason or another, and I would eat alone at the kitchen table. Do you really know how much I love you? How else can I show it?

Moving abroad and living alone has brought a whole new set of challenges. I love finding new recipes and dancing in the kitchen as I cook, but sometimes I’ll taste a dish and wish someone was there to validate my pride. I’ll send a photo to my family via WhatsApp and say I wish you could taste this. As in, I love you, and I miss you. I suppose that’s why I cried a few weeks ago when I opened a package from my parents to find my favorite chocolates from Trader Joe’s. It was an echo.

by Melissa Franklin Sanchez

I used to joke that I would stop feeling lonely once I found someone who was always willing to peel a clementine for me. I have short, weak nails from years of biting and have never been able to properly peel one. Recently, I’ve been buying bags of imperfect clementines and having a few a day. I use a knife to peel them. More often than not, I cut too deep into its skin and the juice gets all over my hand and the smell of it fills the kitchen. It stains my skin like perfume. I’m reminded of this poem:

ABUNDANCE by Amy Schmidt 

in memory of Mary Oliver

It’s impossible to be lonely
when you’re zesting an orange.
Scrape the soft rind once
and the whole room
fills with fruit.
Look around: you have
more than enough.
Always have.
You just didn’t notice
until now.

There’s a beauty to cooking for yourself that finds its root in attention. There’s attention towards myself, making sure I’m eating enough, and saving some extra for lunch the next day. There’s attention to the food, where it came from, doing what I can to respect it and cook it well. There’s attention to the absence (and far-away presence) of my friends and family, replicating recipes and letting memories bubble up and out onto the plate. Yes, love is stored in the kitchen, but it’s stored in the body in the kitchen. My body moves, but the love remains. It grows.

It’s always a privilege to share it when I’m able to. One day it’ll be more often than not. But in the meantime, I don’t think I need to feel lonely. I love how deeply food is associated with memory. My grandma is with me when I cut pears. My friend Meredith is with me when I make mushroom soup. My sister Amelia is with me when I make tteokbokki. Sometimes I’ll be lucky enough to have a new friend over while I cook, and I can immortalize them in whatever dish I’m making. And sometimes, it’s just me and the food. That’s okay too.

Further Reading

“In Time I Find Strength, in Time I Get Caught in the Memories Of Food” by Hannah Khan for Porridge

Eating Alone by Li-Young Lee

cutting greens by Lucille Clifton

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What I Enjoyed This Week

Recent Reads

• “Sticks” by George Saunders. This is a really simple and moving short story about the importance of objects, memory, and a father’s relationship with his children. I see a portrait of a character who fails to properly communicate and his attempt to find other ways to do so. The reader is placed into a position where they are forced to wonder if there is a possibility that the father cared the whole time and was just bad at showing it. Or maybe he never really cared at all. It’s up to you, I guess.

• What did COVID Do To Friendship? by Jane Hu for The New Yorker. I perfectly came across this after last week’s newsletter. It made me consider social media’s impact on new and old friendships, and how its exclusivity in long-distance friendships can sometimes mean sacrifice, but also, often, renewal. The ebbs and flows of friendships over this past year feel embarrassingly banal—more often prompted by no one thing and the source of no one’s fault. But, just as the dissipation of a friendship might be blamelessly shared, so, too, is the work of its possible return.

• Starlight by Ted Kooser. It’s two lines long and it’s beautiful:

All night, this soft rain from the distant past.
No wonder I sometimes waken as a child.

Other Wonderful Things

• The Yoshitomo Nara exhibit at Pace Gallery. I love Nara’s work and it was so neat to see it in person. He’s known primarily for his depiction of (often simply) illustrated children showing various forms of complex emotion. I like the way he uses medium like cardboard boxes and crayons. He said once: I kind of see the children among other, bigger, bad people all around them, who are holding bigger knives. Here are some of his pieces.

• BTS now have individual Instagram accounts. I always appreciate seeing the human side of big celebrities I admire. In this case, it means watching them comment silly things on each other’s posts and learn how to express themselves through the platform. Bonus: Namjoon (RM) visited and posted photos of some places in and around Washington D.C., where I grew up. I’m so glad he enjoyed the Virginia sunsets that I love so much.

Thank you for reading. Let’s eat well.

<3

Tara