Tag: FoodAndMeaning

  • A Meal for One Still Deserves a Plate

    A Meal for One Still Deserves a Plate

    If you’ve been reading Salt, Ink & Soul for a while, you know I cook. And you know I love doing it.

    But I had to learn one part of cooking on my own.

    Sitting down to enjoy the meal.

    That sounds a little ridiculous when I write it. I can spend time thinking about ingredients, adjusting the seasoning until something tastes the way I want, and patiently waiting for it to finish.

    Then, once the food is ready, I suddenly feel like I need to get through it.

    Apparently, I have time to cook dinner. Enjoying dinner requires a separate conversation.

    For a long time, I didn’t think much about how I ate.

    Sometimes I’d take my food to my desk. Other times, I’d put everything on a plate without much concern for how it looked. As long as it tasted good, I figured I’d done my part.

    And then I’d eat.

    Not really savoring anything. I barely gave myself enough time to taste what I’d spent so much time preparing.

    I ate as though someone had started a stopwatch.

    It was almost as if eating had become another chore. Something I absolutely had to do rather than something I might actually enjoy.

    Which is a strange way to treat something you love.

    I could spend an hour preparing a meal and only a few minutes eating it.

    Somewhere along the way, I’d separated the pleasure of cooking from the pleasure of eating.

    Lately, I’ve been trying to change that.

    I’ve started paying more attention to how I put food on my plate. Maybe all those years of watching the Food Network finally caught up with me. Who knows? YouTube has helped me learn a few basics, too.

    Nothing elaborate. Just considering where things go, how the colors work together, and whether the plate looks like something I’d be happy to sit down to.

    I cook. I am not a chef.

    Nobody needs to inspect my kitchen for a Michelin star.

    But we eat with our eyes as well as our taste buds. I’ve discovered that taking a few extra moments to arrange a meal changes how I approach it.

    When I look down and see something I’ve taken care to prepare, I want to give it a little more attention.

    I notice what I’ve made.

    The colors. The way a sauce settles around the food. The texture of each bite. That first bite when everything I hoped would work together finally does.

    There’s a quiet satisfaction in that.

    After all the effort I put into cooking, I’d like to be present for the result.

    So now I try to get everything together before I begin.

    My plate. My utensils. Something to drink.

    A napkin, because I do try to eat like I’ve had some home training.

    And then I sit down.

    Not at my desk, trying to eat between whatever else I’m doing. Not rushing through dinner as though finishing first will earn me something.

    Just sitting down to eat.

    I’m learning to tell the difference between being full and enjoying a meal.

    They aren’t necessarily the same thing.

    You can finish an entire plate of food and barely remember eating it. I know because I’ve done it more times than I care to admit.

    That makes me wonder how many other small pleasures I’ve rushed through simply because I was thinking about whatever came next.

    I don’t have an answer.

    But I am paying more attention.

    When you cook for other people, it’s natural to think about their experience. You want the food to taste good. You want them comfortable. You might choose a plate carefully or make sure they have everything they need before you sit down.

    Cooking for yourself means remembering you are sitting at the table, too.

    Dinner doesn’t need company to deserve a little attention.

    The person eating the meal is already there.

    I don’t mean every evening needs to become an occasion. Some days, getting something warm onto a plate is plenty. I have no interest in turning dinner into another assignment or grading myself on where I put a piece of chicken.

    And there will probably still be evenings when I eat at my desk.

    Old habits don’t disappear simply because you’ve written an essay about them.

    But when I have the time and energy, I’d like to do something different.

    I’d like to enjoy what I’ve made.

    To taste the seasoning I spent time getting right. To appreciate the texture I waited for. To take another bite because I want one, not because I’m trying to finish.

    Nobody has to compliment the meal. Nobody has to be impressed by the presentation.

    I can taste it and decide for myself.

    Perhaps that’s part of what I’m learning.

    Cooking for myself doesn’t have to mean giving myself whatever attention is left over.

    I’m still practicing.

    But lately, when dinner is ready, I try to remember that the work I put into it was meant to lead somewhere.

    To this plate. This chair. This moment when I finally get to taste what I’ve made.

    And I sit down.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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    Resources for Hard Times

    If you’re looking for practical help, food support, or community resources, you can visit the Salt, Ink & Soul Resources Page.

    👉 Resources for Hard Times

  • I Cook. I Am Not a Chef.

    I Cook. I Am Not a Chef.

    I Cook.

    I say that carefully, almost defensively, the way someone says I write but refuses the title that would make it sound like a performance. I cook, but I am not a chef. Not because I lack skill, but because I reject what that word has come to mean—at least in the way it’s been packaged, televised, plated, and praised.

    Turn on a screen or scroll long enough and you’ll find yourself staring at a meal made by someone with a coat, a pedigree, and an accent—something arranged with tweezers, built from ingredients you have to Google, let alone locate. The lighting is perfect. The language around it is reverent. The price is astronomical.

    And somewhere in the middle of all that spectacle, a quiet question tries to form:

    Does this feed anyone?

    Not the ego. That’s already been fed.

    Not the reputation. That’s the point.

    I mean the body. The soul. The tired person who’s been chewed up by the world and needs something warm, steady, and honest to bring them back to themselves.

    What Food Is Supposed to Do

    Food is meant to do two things at once.

    It should send you out into the world strong, grounded, nourished, capable of standing upright in whatever waits for you. And it should welcome you home, comforting you after the world has taken its cut.

    A good meal says, Sit down. You made it. You’re safe here for a moment.

    Too much of what passes for “great food” today does neither.

    Some of these five-star, white-tablecloth experiences leave you not with fullness, but with confusion. You spend the first five minutes asking how you’re supposed to eat it. The next five are asking what it even is. And the last few wondering, was that it?

    A smear.

    A foam.

    A reduction of something that once had a spine.

    You leave with a taste and a question mark. No warmth. No grounding. No sense that your body was actually consulted in the process.

    When Difficulty Gets Mistaken for Care

    Then come the reviews.

    Long, florid essays written by people who seem less interested in being fed than in proving they understood the meal. As if complexity itself were nourishment. As if difficulty were virtue. As if decoding were the same thing as being cared for.

    Sometimes I suspect those reviews exist not to describe the food, but to inflate it—to stretch a small experience into something larger than it was. To reassure the diner, the chef, and the culture that the emperor’s plate is, in fact, wearing clothes.

    About That Word “Chef”

    Maybe the problem starts with the word chef itself.

    At its root, a chef is a person trained in traditional French cooking. That’s not an insult. It’s a definition. But definitions matter—especially when they quietly turn into hierarchies.

    And here’s where I say the thing that makes people uncomfortable:

    I do not believe the French know how to cook.

    Not in the way that matters to me.

    They drown everything in sauce, then congratulate themselves for having learned how to drown properly. Technique over instinct. Presentation on nutrition. Control over generosity. The dish becomes a demonstration rather than an offering.

    The sauce isn’t always there to enhance. Sometimes it’s there to hide—to obscure the fact that without it, the food has nothing to say.

    What troubles me more is how that tradition looks down on everything that didn’t come from Europe—especially the cuisines built without academies, without written rules, without approval. The foods made by people who cooked because they had to. People who turned scraps into sustenance. Who learned flavor not from textbooks, but from hunger, memory, and survival.

    The Truth Told by Bread

    Ironically, the best thing to come out of France isn’t a sauce at all.

    It’s bread.

    The baguette.

    The food of the poor.

    Flour. Water. Yeast. Time. Crisp crust. Soft interior. No performance. No confusion. No question about what it is or what it’s for.

    You tear it.

    You eat it.

    You’re fed.

    Perfect in its simplicity.

    And that tells the truth the rest of the cuisine tries to avoid.

    The Lineage I Claim

    The true food of any people comes from those who make something out of nothing. From those who cook not to impress, but to sustain. From kitchens where the question isn’t Is this innovative? But will this carry us through the night?

    That’s the lineage I claim.

    I cook food meant to hold you together. Food that understands fatigue. Food that doesn’t need a narrator. Food that respects the eater enough not to turn them into an audience.

    When I cook, I’m not trying to challenge you.

    I’m trying to care for you.

    I want the meal to say, You don’t have to think so hard right now. I want it to meet you where you are—hungry, worn down, hopeful, human.

    Good food doesn’t leave you with questions.

    It leaves you with strength.

    It leaves you with comfort.

    It leaves you ready to go back out into the world—or prepared to rest from it.

    So no, I’m not a chef.

    Cooking is an act of hospitality, not hierarchy. An offering, not a performance. A quiet declaration that survival deserves pleasure—and pleasure doesn’t need permission.

    And if that means my food will never be plated with tweezers or praised in paragraphs, so be it.

    The people I cook for don’t need convincing.

    They just need to be fed.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

    Please like, comment, and share

    Resources for Hard Times

    If you’re looking for practical help, food support, or community resources, you can visit the Salt, Ink & Soul Resources Page.

    👉 Resources for Hard Times