How Baking got me closer to how I want to live
September 2025
For many years, I have wanted to be a person who enjoys and savors food.
I have been into food for decades – growing up on Cooking Shows, Gourmet and Food & Wine in the early 90’s – I’ve always been more about consuming than savoring.
Like many, food is in my blood. My parents canned their own tomatoes and made their own horseradish – just because they could. We still spend one Saturday in December making pierogi for Christmas Eve.
Food is not just nourishment, but it is culture, it is life.
I jumped in as a teenager and never left.
And used it as another tactic to numb out. It’s a pretty good cover.
This is needed 3-5 times a day, over and over until death and why not make it special and important. Anything and everything good can be a cover if done for the wrong reasons. This was one of them.
While married, I learned to be efficient, thrifty and varied – great skills.
When I divorced, I stopped all of it. I felt like I could. And that’s when I started noticing how I had used it to numb – but hadn’t realized the depths of it yet.
Now there was this openness and availability with no structure, and I found a different version of numbness and dissociation than the regimentation of the married years.
As I’m winding my way to a different relationship with cooking and food, I’m working to find one that combines the best of both of the efficient thrifty and varied along with the openness and availability. This relationship needs to actually have ME in it. Not what all the food writing, shows and films I’ve watched over the years have said about it. Right now I have some guidelines to give me some guardrails so it doesn’t spin out.
In so much of this though, it can be hard to figure out if these guidelines come from me (my voice) or the voice of unrealized conditioning. But maybe sometimes those two voices are in agreement!
Recently, I’ve added an aspect to my food/cooking world that has (essentially) forced me to be all about the process, the presence.
Baking.
Baking gives me the quick bursts of activity I need, followed by the resting period where I get to be on my timeline before going back to the recipes. Right now, it is the only thing that will get me off the Chronos timeline and let me enjoy other activities (reading, writing, cleaning) in that subliminal space where time doesn’t exist.
Everything is much more enjoyable when not under obligation. Especially activities that are enjoyable under obligation.
In addition, baking has given me a chance to think more about the food, the ingredients, the implements and the energy that goes into baking and making (and acquiring and storing.)
My new weekly schedule includes a new bake for the last few months. It is something that I have been trying to do regularly for years and now it’s actually happening. (For me, the time from when I want to do something to said something actually happening is anywhere from 1-5 years.)
In addition, I hear all the time in my head: If you are going to have something, why not make it the best? I’ve found it difficult to follow. The thought is why not get your favorite bread, put the salt in the pretty jar and leave it out, get the pans that make you smile and the dishes that make you feel like a queen or king?
Great in theory – much more challenging in practice.
I really prefer simpler things when it comes to my kitchen and food. People love colors and variety for their dishes and tableware, but it just makes me anxious. I’ve tried. I can’t stick with it.
White plain dishes make me feel like I’m at a restaurant (and being served rather than serving myself).
Getting the best tools for the kitchen and storing them away makes me feel satisfied.
Buying my favorite foods AND preparing, eating them, means I actually eat – most days.
Prepping things in advance – and much more than most recipes call for (mix the dry and wet ingredients together the day before you bake) – has been an absolute game changer for me. It puts baking in my reach.
In working with nutritionists over the years, I realized I still need some variety. One revelation was placemats and napkins with a few pieces that I rotate for table decor. I have committed to changing it all only once a month. This helps to remind me what true self-care really is.
True self-care is in the daily, repetitive things that I do – including eating, making eating easy and enjoyable.
There have always been and I imagine there will always be times where I find eating and cooking to be challenging – because I’m human. But somehow, if I can remember that every meal is an event (in a good way) – I can slow myself down enough to where I can enjoy the process and the food. (or eat it all).
I’ve read The Pleasures of Eating Well by Wendell Berry over the years and it always reminds me that THAT is not just how I want to eat.
That is how I want to live. Starting with eating though, helps make that living and being possible for me.