Thanks for all your well thought out replies; seems like it’s happened to most of us at various times. And to those who are still embracing their passion for food and cooking keep on keepin on!
What’s working right now: cooking with DH, sometimes even big projects. We turn some music on and have fun! I do the prep sitting down mostly, easier on back that way.
Also have started reading Shaya, which is a cookbook with stories about his serpentine journeys from Israel to finally opening three restaurants in New Orleans & picking up a James Beard Award along the way. He’s got a great narrative voice with which he guides you along to his food. Highly recommend it.
So, while I’m slowly regaining some interest, I’m not there yet, but sure I’ll find my way back to the kitchen like before. Fingers crossed.
78 YO man here. I too am compiling a book of (mostly) family recipes for my granddaughters. As for the kitchen here, it’s all mine. My chief daily challenge is doing something vegetarian (for Mrs. O) that will hold my interest, which is getting easier all the time. She is going to go on three major trips on her own, one for a couple of weeks this next month, one to Vietnam for most of July, and another short one to Portland in August, and I have some serious meat-centric things I’m dying to try, such as making a confit of lamb shank and then basing a cassoulet on that. In the meantime, I enjoy my daily duties at the cooktop and oven.
I guess the short answer is: No, I am not losing interest at all!
I’m so HAPPY to hear stories like yours! Thank you for sharing. I’m hoping this terrible rut and ennui will end soon. Am sure it’s only a matter of time, and hopefully when the garden starts producing that will impell me to want to cook again.
A new year of fresh ingredients is always good motivation. I will be visiting friends and family in Nashville at the end of June, and I look forward to the new crops of field peas – blackeyes, pinkeyes, Lady peas and Creamers – which I discovered only the last few years we lived there. My last early-summer visit, I brought about a pound home; I expect to pack and send more this time. Delicious dried, but heavenly cooked from fresh.
Do you happen to know if these peas will still be producing in South Carolina in August? We will likely be spending a week or so there then so I could mail some home or bring the big suitcase. I always buy Carolina Gold rice while there as well as grits. I’m going to get some special fry dredging stuff too - makes heavenly fried shrimp. If only I could get a gallon of peanut oil there - very expensive here, even in the Asian stores
Happy to say I think I’m shaking off the ennui and disinterest in cooking. Setting projects for self and going to keep going. Made homemade English Muffins yesterday. Kind of fun and pretty darn good for a first attempt. Next up - crumpets. Also, for dinner tomorrow, pork ribs, potato salad. COTC and green salad.
I’ve been waiting so long to regain my passion for the kitchen. Also bought some new cookbooks & kitchen toys, not that I need them…
Funny. In my mind I’m no older so, for example, when I’m entertaining I take on as much as I would have a few years ago. But as I’m working I get so tired. If I didn’t have to clean as I go, I’d probably to better. I also have arthritis in my hands so there’s that. I tend to overwhelm myself. But, I find that I’ve started to do more things that I can make ahead.
Yes, wcg, gone are the days when I would check with DH and then ask a coworker and spouse for dinner…at 2 in the afternoon, plan a meal, shop after getting off the bus and have a meal on the table at 8:30. Also gone are the days when I would spend all day prepping and cooking for guests arriving at 6:30. Today I find that many parts of a meal can be prepped or made several days in advance, that only 1 or 2 tasks will be left to accomplish, and that I even can have time for a nap mid-afternoon on the actual date. My mitigating problem is a back issue that sends me into sciatica if I stand in one place too long. Answer, DON’T stand in one place too long!
I do not know how the cycle runs in SC – there were only two varieties in my favorite Nashville store in mid-June last time I was there, and none in the Farmer’s Market. I will be staying with my brother in East Nashville, where there is a weekly FM he can’t stop talking about, so I know that drop-dead tomatoes will definitely be on the menu, and those Amish-farmer eggs he says are so big they have to put rubber bands around the cartons. I might be having a one-egg breakfast here …
Thanks! It sounds like they have some nice early produce in that part of the country. I’ll have to check at the market while there. We are still a ways off from the harvest of anything except chives, mint and rhubarb. Oh and local strawberries are ready. They are so good.
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meatn3
(equal opportunity eater in the NC Triangle)
52
You should still be able to get field peas then. At my NC farmers market they are often available already shucked, packaged in zip bags and refrigerated. Some info you might enjoy:
I was amazed on that last mid-June trip to find sandwiches-over-the-sink-worthy tomatoes in the GROCERY STORES already! Luckily we were staying with a friend who kept good bread and mayo handy …
Yeah, we have to wait awhile for tomatoes, peaches and blackberries, I’m envious of those already eating perfectly ripe fruit & veggie! The over the sink sandwiches sound delicious too.
How sad. My mom died from complications of alzheimer’s. At first it made her eat more, and more of what she wanted like french fries. In the end, she forgot she needed to and just wouldn’t eat. Bloody sad disease.
Sad but excellent article and thanks for posting bbqboy!
I’m the OP of this thread, and I’m happy to say the doldrums have left. It was a major reason I began posting here, because I was feeling a bit desperate with my lack of desire to cook or even grocery shop. So unlike me! I’ve realized now that it started with loss, followed by more loss, sometimes shocking, unexpected and premature. At my age, this is just life and we’ll all have to go through it, if we live long enough.
So, with the help of my drug dealer, I mean my doc, I’m feeling a lot better, am embracing the kitchen again and also growing beautiful flowers. Want to thank you all for your help, suggestions and ideas.
Forgot to mention that the ennui lasted 4 years! So get to your MD or other Health professionals if you start feeling wonky and it won’t go away. Physically, emotionally, mentally.
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meatn3
(equal opportunity eater in the NC Triangle)
60
The brain is such a strange thing. She is able to write eloquently and with such insight about her life dealing with expanding holes in her memory. Seeing the experience through her eyes helped me understand it a bit more. The coping methods she has used are brilliant.
