Ask Mess Hall: The Question of Sustenance

another day another metabolic urge

Welcome to your latest Mess Hall mailbag episode—previous installments are here:

Vegetarian Dinner Party Ideas

Cast Iron Care + Freezing Greens

Not-Depressing Lunches

Brothless Beans

& please submit your cooking questions—the more existential, the better—to this Google Form!

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Q: How can I feed myself daily without it feeling like a drag!!

Often I think I’m an imperfect advice-giver when it comes to kitchen labor, because I so often enjoy it. Cooking gives me something to do with my hands, (usually) away from a screen. It is a pleasurable toil, occasionally a creative outlet, occasionally a way to care for people, to con people in coming over and hanging out with me. It is a vessel for all of my manic/restless energy. It fills my brain. Does it always make me “happy”? No! It often drives me insane! But still I would say generally, yes, I like, even sometimes love, to cook.

Recently, though, as I’ve tried to incorporate more protein into my diet for the purposes of getting yolked, I have begun to feel, I think, the toil that other people feel about cooking in general. I still find pleasure in the busywork, I still itch to get into the kitchen and away from my phone, but having to think so much about what I’m eating can be a drag. I love to roast a chicken as much as the next white woman but even that can become exhausting when it is a pragmatic rather than a pleasure-driven choice. I am up to my eyes in tofu. I have been falling into ruts more often. All of this to say, I know that feeling, the drag.