I’ve Fallen out of Love With Food

How a year of eating at home has ended my lifelong love affair

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

The other day, I was sitting on my couch, minding my own sweat-pant-wearing business, when an email landed in my inbox. An update from a blog I subscribe to. A new recipe for a kale and shaved brussels sprout salad. Upon opening this email, a painful malaise struck me, like a gut punch. I groaned aloud. My concerned husband shouted from upstairs, “What’s wrong?” I said, “Nothing.” But inside, I was thinking: Spare me. Spare me your stupid sprouts.

To be clear, it wasn’t actually the sprouts or the kale that bothered me. Those foods are fine. In normal times, my curiosity probably would’ve gotten the best of me and I would have clicked to open the blog post. The root of this pain was something deeper. The word ‘new.’ The birth of yet another recipe. The very existence of this food blogger, minding her business and developing new recipes as if everything was good and fine. The futility and sameness of it all.

After a whole year of eating at home, I am utterly exhausted by food. I am tired of cooking it, ordering it, shopping for it. I am tired of looking at pictures of it on Instagram. Yes, I still get hungry, and I do still derive some pleasure from eating, but the whole culture of food, the spicy song and dance, the flavourful mystique, the appetite-whetting appeal has completely dissolved in the bland broth of my current life, another casualty of this ongoing pandemic.

Of course, this statement comes from a place of incredible privilege. The world is in a tough place. Children are going hungry, and families are relying on food banks. In comparison, it’s really not that big of a deal to be bored with something, especially when it’s something you have plenty of. So, take everything I say with a figurative grain of salt. Take it as a good-natured rant, one of a creative nature. This is about food as a hobby, a passion, a pastime. It’s not about food as a nutritional necessity.

I’m no world-class chef or seasoned foodie, but I have always loved food. Through the ups and downs of my life, it has been a constant companion, a source of endless fascination. When I was growing up, my dad’s weekly trips to the grocery store were one of the high points in an otherwise…