Let’s eat. We hear from foodies, insiders and just plain hungry folks. Grab a fork and a seat at the table. It’s time to dig in.

Food and Drink Narratives From Anonymous Authors

Food

Being stuck with the Sunday skeleton crew waiting on the crustiest bunch of Christians the Bible Belt has to offer wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t by myself, or at least so hungover. I don’t even remember my hour-and-a-half commute. I drank too much last night and stayed up too late. Now I’m way too hungover with way too many tables and not enough fucks to see me through the week, let alone the end of this shift. As soon as the old man in front of me spits out his order, I’m going to the restroom. Just as soon as those mortuary-thin lips part and the cobwebs clear from his esophagus. Just as soon as he upholds the patriarchal chain of command and orders without consulting his wife. Just as soon as he— 

“Y'all's tea fresh? I don’t want no spoiled tea.”

Standing here, hurrying up just to wait. This job wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for these people. They turn a 10-hour drag into a sadistic hell full of assholes huffing their farts and asking if you like the smell. I know a lot of servers don’t feel this way, but I do, and I don’t think it’s my fault.

It’s not the 30 hours of work or even the 15 hours of class every week that kills me. It’s not my three-hour round-trip commute or my strung-out coworkers. It’s not even my sycophant manager or the horndog owner. 

It’s not any of that. It’s the other part: the never-ending requests for more butter and ranch. The idiots that can’t remember what they ordered. The lame-ass jokes and recycled cliches. Asking for a “strong” drink or food we don’t carry because they’re too illiterate to read the menu. The lactose-intolerant, gluten-free fuckwads expecting the red carpet in a dive bar. The bootlicking homophobes calling me a “fag” when I cut them off. The racist sacks of shit in cowboy hats and their undeserved sense of entitlement. Oh, and every single fucking dipshit that orders a filet mignon well-done. Get fucked. All of you. You’re the reasons I hate my job, lost faith in humanity, God and any hope of escaping this Midwest circumstance. 

It’s not that I don’t want to work or that I’m lazy. It’s the unconscious morons that would rather shoot the shit and polish a turd instead of ordering. It’s not my fault I lost hope in everything; it’s the public’s. 

“I think I'll take me a sweet tea.” 

“I’ll have that right out to you.” Right after I get myself where I need to be.

How did I get here, spreading out white lines on a toilet paper holder? I could’ve been a teacher like Mom wanted. Or anything besides a wannabe cliche, another table-waiting writer. If the Christians could see me now, their knickers would be twisted up further than the stick in their ass. They’d wonder, how in heaven’s name could anyone wait tables on drugs? But honestly, how in the hell could anyone wait tables not on drugs? There are a few things in this world you can trust: a fat cook, a dirty mechanic and an inebriated bartender. Granted, I’m coked out and not drunk, but after this, I’ll type a 3,000-word essay on the ideologies of the French Revolution, then wake up for a lecture on historiography and start over again. 

Right now, I’ve got 50 bucks of blow in my nose and a restaurant full of hungry assholes whose kindness went out the stained glass when the dollar bills hit the offering plate. I’ve got bills to pay and old folks waiting on teas. An appetizer for 12. Seven needs salads. Shit! The regulars. Tom and Tracy need a drink. Honestly, fuck those little kids and their coloring books. I’ll pretend I forgot.

Did the door ding again? Great. Any boog-shug in the Batcave? Nope. I’m good. Let’s do this. Well, what’s one more? WHO-AH! Shit, did they hear that? I sound like a Hoover going over a wet balloon. Fuck it. Sniff, sniff, it's allergy season, you know how it is.

“We have six.” Alright lady, cool, I’ll go fuck myself. I didn’t give a shit how your day was anyway. More people coming in. Fucking awesome.

“Ma’am, I have a table here, and I’ll be right with you.” This stay-at-home mom eats so much Xanax, she double taps Vyvanse to pass the time between strokes of the broom. What am I saying? That’s rude to assume. I’m sure she has a maid. 

Do I know this couple? I hope I don’t know anyone who still wears boat shoes and pastel polos. 

Goddammit. He knows me. “Whaddup, dude?”

Shit. “Hey man, how are you? Just two?” 

I think I recognize him. His face is so fat and average. I’ve seen it a thousand times on the Frat Chads in knee-high khakis, Apple Watches and Oakley shades. Cardboard cutouts that left their small town for a big university, earning a business degree only to pick up the family legacy where Daddy left off. They’re the generational circumstance of a silver spoon. They either have their nose so high, they’d drown in the rain or so far up their ass, their face could be an enema.

“Oh! Before you run off—” Before? Motherfucker, I’m already six steps and a hopscotch across the dining room. “Babe, Bloody Marys?” 

“Yasssss, that sounds so good.” It pisses me off that she’s hot.

“Oh, can we … alsooooooooooo … geeeet … an order of oysters?”

“Oh, and bud, make those drinks strong, mmkay?” Did this cuck seriously wink at me?

How about some vodka and ketchup and then you can drive drunk straight to hell? Wait … is that the same guy I heard got beat up for shitting on someone’s carpet and woke up in his Beamer, smeared head to toe in poop? Good to see he’s still a shitstain.

Alright, they need their drinks. I ran that appetizer, got those salads. Tom’s good. Tracy’s nursing her drink. Now I just need to get the table of pre-cremated corpses their drinks and I’ll be good. These old fucks probably saw me talking to Shitpants McGee instead of doing my job. Oh well, they’ll take it out of the ten percent they weren’t gonna tip me. 

“Where’s my lemon? I told you, sweet tea with lemon.” No you didn’t, you gaslighting old fuck. 

If they’re the people I’ll meet in heaven, I’m glad I’ll miss out. It’s never just one trip to a table of old people. There’s too much hair in their ears to hear you and not enough dental glue to tell you what they need. We should just take away their rights. No driving, no voting, no cell phones, Facebook or Fox News. These cunts are getting the local news, golf and Matlock. Anything else is too stimulating. While we’re at it, no sugar or dairy. It’s Splenda and powdered creamer only, or no senior discount. 

“Here’s your lemon, sir. Are we ready to order?”

You move to their beat and stop when they say, or you’re rude and lazy. I wish I could say it gets better, but it won’t. It’s the same every day. I wish I could say the old fucks and the young cunts tipped me well. I wish, despite all my negative thinking, that I was wrong, but I’m not. They tipped a collective $7. 

But I don’t care anymore. I’ve got nine hours of ricocheting from table to table like a fly searching a window pane for financial freedom. I can’t wait to close so I can sit down in my car after ten hours of serving, in that silence between a commute and an essay, where my feet burn with relief and my mind throws away its list of everyone’s bullshit. Then, when the time’s right, I’ll light a joint, drive home and start over again. For now, though, I’m stuck serving old Christians, coked out of my mind, trying to make ends meet between a dead-end job and a stupid dream.

Fear and Loathing in the Restaurant Biz

Walking down the aisles at the Whole Foods in Downtown Los Angeles is a surreal experience. For starters, it occupies the same street corner where Elizabeth Short, aka the Black Dahlia, is believed to have been abducted. And then there’s the experience of walking through the doors—outside, unhoused residents pitch tents across the street while security guards neurotically patrol the entrance. Sometimes, there’s a man who plays the trumpet outside, a cardboard donation box to his left, a gray cat to his right. The guards let him stay because he provides entertainment to the customers. 

Then you enter the store. It’s like stepping into a fresh fever dream. The air conditioner billows at overtime, starkly contrasted by the unforgiving heat of the dry season outside. “Pocketful of Sunshine” by Natasha Bedingfield blares overhead—the playlist is like something pulled straight out of a Hollister in 2008. 

The first step to a successful heist: take a second or two to let the ridiculous contradictions of the Whole Foods set in—the $20 “chakra” candles, the luxury skincare, the needlessly expensive produce (rare mushrooms foraged in Japan, dragon fruit, $8 cherries, etc.), packaged sushi that’s more expensive than an actual restaurant—and let it all inspire you. Pretend that this is all a simulation; you are playing a video game, or it’s a GTA mission. That white woman in dreads buying ashwagandha and endangered palo santo? She’s a CPU. Hell, you’re a CPU. 

I can’t stress this one enough. Make sure the tote bag is ambiguous enough to where it could be your stylish bag of choice or something to lug your groceries in. Grab a shopping basket. Find a cheap, large bag of chips and place it in the basket. Periodically slip items you won’t be paying for into your tote bag.

Remember: You’re a CPU; you’re playing a role. Maybe you’re an overworked fashion assistant, a micro-niche internet celebrity, an underground rockstar, a Hollywood producer, a super spy, Albanian royalty—doesn’t matter. Personally speaking, I like to pretend I’m George Clooney’s overworked assistant: I don’t have time for bullshit—like a security guard checking my tote bag—because Mr. Clooney needs me, stat! It’s all about performance. Try to look like a yuppie, maybe even have a latte as prop—something that screams, “I write for Jezebel,” or Whole Foods customer. 

Yes, the squadron of security guards patrolling the store and its exit can be intimidating. But remember, the demonization of the unhoused has integrated itself into the DNA of places like Whole Foods. In other words, their obsessive assumptions of what a shoplifter should look like can be used as protective coverage.

All of these tips, ideally, will make you a master thief. But remember, it’s nothing to brag about. It’s objectively disgusting that the more yuppie-passing you are (regardless of your actual class position), the easier it is to get away with theft. That’s the essential component of privilege in its most searingly obvious form. 

The first few times you get away with an expensive heist, you’re high off a rush of false empowerment; there's something seductive to it, like juvenile rebellion. But pretty soon, it’s obvious that stealing from Whole Foods is not the anticapitalist statement you think it is. It’s still consumption, just with a few of the logistical steps (like paying) skipped . There is nothing revolutionary about stealing $40 vitamin C serum or Grade A cacao beans you will most certainly never use. If you’re going to be a scammer, it’s in your best interest to not be a delusional one.

Just because it might not necessarily start a communist revolution doesn’t mean it can’t be used for good. Lord knows there are plenty of hungry people right outside Whole Foods. Give back—not because you are a saint but because it’s your responsibility. Plus, you can pretend you’re a superspy-esque Robin Hood while you’re browsing the aisles (just for fun). 

The first step is to actually get to know the unhoused near you—they are your neighbors, after all. With time, you’ll build a relationship, so the next time you stop into Whole Foods, ask your neighbors if there’s anything they’d like or need—maybe a meal, a snack, a simple luxury and so on. My friend, who I’ll refer to as her nickname Ladybug for privacy, lives in a tent near the Whole Foods. She has a pet cat, so I make sure to grab her some kitty food, her favorite snacks and meals that don’t require preparation (think pre-packaged sushi, sandwich materials, dried fruits and nuts).

This might sound contradictory, but security guards are trained to spot the body language of shoplifters. Don’t look shifty; don’t try to slip anything into your pockets. A useful cognitive tool is to behave as if the objects you are stealing have already been purchased. Some of the most extravagant thefts of mine have been done while holding said objects in my hand, in full view of the security guards, as I walk out the door. But this can only work if you can exhibit the false confidence that you are the rightful owner of whatever merchandise you are taking. 

Remember: You’re a character. Stay in character. When you’re about to leave, if you have any paranoia that you’ll be stopped, pretend to be on a high-powered phone call. Walk angrily and shout to the phone something along the lines of, “You tell HIM that we’ll be seeing him in court!” or, “What do you mean I’m playing a concert tomorrow? I already told my agent it’s my niece’s birthday!” 

Well, there you have it. I can’t promise you these tips will make you a foolproof shoplifter. But they might make you a better one, so long as you do so with utmost confidence and inscrutability.

I Love Shoplifting From Whole Foods

A surge of adrenaline rushed through my body as soon as I heard the chirp of an incoming request. The book I was reading flew to the passenger’s seat, as if it had been trained to do so, and I looked at my phone to see what Uber was offering. The countdown timer pressured me to accept, but I had learned the hard way to use all 15 seconds of my allotted time to review the information on my screen before accepting or rejecting the request.

This one was a delivery trip, but not from a restaurant. It was a Walmart grocery delivery. I had only done a few of those and it had never been a particularly pleasant experience, but the estimated payout was decent and the drop-off location was fairly close. A familiar fear set in as I contemplated sitting in my car for 20 minutes waiting for the next request. With only a second or two left before the opportunity disappeared forever, I hit the accept button, started up my car and launched into one of the worst experiences of my career as a part-time Uber driver.

Getting to Walmart was no problem. Like I said, I’d been there a few times before. I pulled into one of the designated grocery delivery pickup spots and called the number on the sign. The good news was that I didn’t have to wait long. The bad news was that it was the biggest Walmart grocery order I had ever seen. Eight cases of 32 water bottles towered over one of the two carts. They were flanked by cases of soda, a gallon of milk, a few cartons of fruit juice, canned food, frozen food and baked goods. I helped the two Walmart employees load everything into my trunk and backseat and set out.

Just two minutes before reaching the destination, the familiar chirping of an incoming request once again filled the car. It’s not uncommon for Uber to offer another trip as I finish up the previous one. I knew that it would take me a few minutes to unload all the groceries onto the customer’s porch in the muggy heat, but I went ahead and accepted the McDonald’s delivery.

It was only as I pulled up to the destination that I realized exactly what I had gotten myself into. This was an apartment complex, and the number one rule of Uber deliveries to an apartment without an elevator is that the door you are trying to get to is always on the top floor. This delivery was no exception. For every load of groceries, I would have to climb up a half-flight of stairs to get to the front door, open the aforementioned door with my hands full of groceries, climb up two flights of stairs, open a stairwell door, open another hallway door and drop off the goods in front of the very last door on the left.

I knew the clock was against me. As far as the McDonald’s customer could tell, the whole time I was climbing those stairs might as well have been me sitting in my car playing a game of solitaire. Even worse, Uber’s algorithm doesn’t factor in the size of the order or the distance to the customer’s door when they estimate the payout for the trip. The only way I would get paid for climbing up those stairs was if the customer was kind enough to leave a tip.

With the clock ticking and no good options, I did the only thing I could do: I ran. With every bounding leap up the stairs, more sweat poured down my face. I started with the eight cases of water, then moved to the soda, milk and juice before bringing in the bags of assorted other goods. I despised every minute of it, but to be fair, I could certainly see why these people had their groceries delivered.

After more trips up the stairs than I cared to keep track of, I was on my way to McDonald’s with the AC on full blast. Looking at the Uber app, I saw a notification warning me that the McDonald’s customer was waiting and that I shouldn’t have spent so much time on the previous request. If I’d had any breath left in me, I would have laughed.

Running across the McDonald’s parking lot, I prayed that the McDonald’s employees would be in a good mood today. Food delivery drivers have an interesting relationship with restaurant workers. My experience has been that most restaurant employees view drivers as their comrades-in-arms. We aren’t the customers; we are folks just trying to make a living like they are. Sure, a few workers here and there just don’t care or act like we are their enemy for whatever reason, but most workers will treat delivery drivers far better than they will treat customers. It’s not uncommon for workers to even offer a drink or some free food, especially around closing time.

While the guy behind the counter at McDonald’s didn’t offer any freebies, he did offer some insider information. “You’re here for that order?” he asked. “Sorry dude, but we’re in the middle of cleaning the ice cream machine. It’s going to be a few more minutes before we can make your McFlurry. You might want to cancel the trip.”

I thought about what he said. I knew he was probably right, but I didn’t want to cancel after all that hassle. Besides, canceling now might only mean waiting for another request in the parking lot, so I might as well wait for the McFlurry.

And wait I did. It took nearly 20 minutes before the order was ready, which actually isn’t the longest I’ve waited for an Uber order at McDonald’s. Nonetheless, I wasted no time getting back out to my car and making sure the food got where it was supposed to go, albeit much later than anticipated.

The instructions on the app told me to leave the food on the porch rather than hand it to the customer, so I never got to meet her in person. She didn’t exactly leave a five-star rating, but I certainly can’t blame her for that. She did not know what it took to deliver her food nor would she ever know.

When people ask me what I like about driving for Uber, my answer is the same every time: Every day is an adventure. Almost daily, I meet interesting people and travel to parts of my own city that I never knew existed. I’ve seen head-on collisions and drug deals. I’ve been tipped $20 by someone who said she liked my taste in music. I’ve comforted a grown man who was bawling because his wife left him and took the kids to a different state. I’ve directed a woman in an abusive relationship to the help she needed. Also, I’ve lugged cases of bottled water to the top of an apartment complex and waited 20 minutes for a McDonald's ice cream machine. 

Whenever I hit the button to launch the Uber app, I have no idea what my day will hold. All I can hope is that customers will be patient with me when things don’t go according to plan. Every day is an adventure.

Money

I’m an Uber Eats Driver: Every Night Is an Adventure

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. That’s how the saying goes, right? 

We’re taught that we have to make the best of the opportunities that we’re given and somehow find a way to make them work to our advantage. We are supposed to grab any and every opportunity that comes our way and figure things out as we go. So when my parents and I had the chance to buy a small antojitos Mexicanos restaurant from a young couple who was looking to get out of the service industry, we jumped at the chance. 

It was the summer of 2018, early August to be exact. During one of my mom’s insomniac nights one weekend, she found a woman’s Facebook post about selling her small antojitos Mexicanos food joint (antojitos Mexicanos are basically quick Mexican foods: tacos, migadas, flautas, gorditas, tortas): “It’s taking too much time away from my young child, so I’m selling the rights to the place, transferring the lease, equipment and personnel contracts.” Less than 48 hours later, the woman and her husband were having coffee at my house, going over the details and signing the contracts. We renamed the place—Trébol, as in a four-leaf clover, since we’d been lucky enough to have this come our way—and were in business by the next Monday.

Food has always been a central part of my family’s life—our kitchen is the heart of our home. The house is purposefully built in a way that the kitchen is right in the middle of it all; there’s no way to avoid walking past it. We’ve spent the happiest and the hardest of times in that kitchen: cooking, drinking, talking, crying, fighting. Owning a restaurant had always been one of my mom’s crazy dreams; from time to time, my dad and I would randomly listen to her daydream, “Maybe one day when the kids are older,” or “Maybe when we’re older and we retire.” It was no surprise that when given the chance to make one of her dreams come true, she convinced my dad and me to take the leap of faith with her—we knew how much this meant to her, so we dived right in. We had no qualifications other than the fact that we had been going to restaurants all our lives and that we were all self-proclaimed foodies, but this was too good to pass up. 

And so, the adventure began. None of us had any real experience when it came to the food industry; we knew nothing about managing a restaurant, but we had tried our hand at different areas and industries before (cars, tires, raw pet food, pest control…I guess you could say we are entrepreneurs at heart), so we figured we could manage. We expected it to be a lot of work, but to say we were overwhelmed by exactly how much work it turned out to be is an understatement. 

For months, we worked 12 to 15 hour days, somehow managing to divide our time between our day jobs—which we were lucky enough to own, so we had that flexibility working for us—the restaurant, family and some social life. My relationship with my parents had always been somewhat strained and complicated, especially when it came to anything food-related, but somehow, despite the long hours, though, spending so much time figuring out vendors, menu edits and branding brought us closer. Instead of arguing over how much who ate—it was usually them complaining about how much they felt I ate—we finally had a food-related thing we could enjoy and work at together, instead of it being a source of constant fighting.

It wasn’t all sugar, spice and everything nice, though. There were a lot of fights, arguments and disagreements that we had to work through. Money played a significant role in those disagreements. While I was constantly advocating for not elevating prices too much and offering free delivery to our customers, I’d be outnumbered by my parents. For nearly two years, we struggled to make ends meet and to meet break-even points with the restaurant costs. It didn’t make sense to us. Why was it that people raved about our food, but I was still seeing red numbers almost daily on our sales reports? We reached out to anyone and everyone we could; we pulled strings and got invited to local food fairs; we received local press and were even a favorite spot for a local singer with a somewhat decent following. It wasn’t enough, though. Every day, I’d dread closing time and having to fill out the daily sales report. I’d dread coming home and hearing my parents ask, “How did we do?” only to have to tell them we didn’t make enough money to cover basic costs, yet again.

Of course, there were periods when sales spiked up; spring break and summer break were always good. Our close proximity to a few different office buildings made us the go-to spot for a good chunk of the employees working there, and we could always tell when payday came along. Despite people loving our food, we were still somehow hemorrhaging money. Things were looking bad, and more often than not, we’d have the “maybe we should just give up, cut our losses and shut down” conversation. It was both depressing and enraging to know that our product was good and beloved by those who tried it, but we still couldn’t find a way to make enough money to keep the business afloat. I mean, I know the logical thing to many would’ve been to cut costs and find cheaper ingredients, but we refused to compromise the quality we were offering. We firmly believed it would be our saving grace, although that belief was slowly waning. 

Things started to change in December of 2019, though. We went from having days where no one would come in to having a line form outside our place and having to bring in my siblings to help take and deliver orders. From opening till closing time, we were full, leaving little to no time for any of us to eat or take a breather—we weren’t complaining. Things were turning around, and the dream we had worked so hard for and invested so much money on finally seemed real and within reach. Day after day, I’d sit down after closing time, running numbers and nearly crying tears of joy when I realized we’d broken our sales record again. 

Things were looking up, but we figured the winter break had a lot to do with the surge in popularity, so we were cautious and tried not to get too excited. When January 2020 rolled around, though, we noticed the momentum kept going. There would be slower days, but sales were still better than we’d seen before. We chalked it up to the fact that we'd been in business long enough and had passed the opening rough start. Week after week, we would celebrate our rising success. February was a better month than January had been, and if things kept going like this, our restaurant would be self-sufficient, and we’d finally be able to see some return on investment by mid-2020.

By the first few days of March, we started considering expanding to a second location as a possibility for the near future. We started scouting locations in different neighborhoods and looking for places where we could replicate the original Trébol. Everything felt like it was finally working out, except it wasn’t. When news broke about this new virus, we knew we had to temporarily shut down. All our staff was considered part of at-risk populations, so the smartest thing to protect them was to take a break and wait for it to blow over. All three of us had lived through the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, so we figured things would be similar and we would be able to avoid a catastrophe by staying at home for a few weeks. 

By March 27, I had sent out messages to our clients and put up social media posts promising our return by mid-April or late May. Of course, things didn’t quite go as planned. April turned to May, spring turned to summer and COVID numbers kept rising. Still, we refused to give up hope. We kept paying rent on the place and never canceled our utilities contracts, hoping that sooner rather than later, we’d be back in business. By November, however, we were forced to admit that the dream was over. I talked to my parents, called our landlord and terminated the lease. 

It’s hard not to think about all the “what ifs.” Had COVID not been a thing, we’d probably have a successful restaurant by now, maybe with a few different locations. We would have expanded, had an opportunity at a better life and been able to create jobs for so many people. To this day, almost a year after shutting down permanently, I can’t fully get over the fact that I won’t ever eat there again or have people come in and order their favorite dishes. I try not to dwell too much on the things the pandemic took away from me, since I know I’m one of the lucky few that has made it through today almost unscathed, but it’s still painful to know that the chance of making that dream come true was taken away from me so abruptly. Maybe one day I’ll try again, but for now, I’ll stick with the knowledge that I’m lucky enough to have had the opportunity to even try to make it come true in the first place. 

COVID Killed Our Dream Restaurant

Drugs & Alcohol

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Travel

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LGBTQ Voices

Motherhood

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Mother Earth

Tearjerkers

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

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New Beginnings

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

Best of 2021

I had come home from work feeling tired as usual and reluctantly set out to assemble a chicken and rice dish for my family. As we sat down to eat, my 10-year-old sister innocently stated, “This dinner has no love in it.”

The comment shocked me. I was speechless and rather embarrassed in front of my giggling siblings, whose reactions seemed to betray their agreement. There was not a trace of malice in my sister’s statement, but the sheer honesty forced me to realize how right she was. There was no love in my food, and there never had been.

I hated cooking and I always had. My philosophy was, if you wanted to live a full and busy life, cooking had to be your lowest priority. Any unnecessary time spent preparing a meal was a waste, I thought. There were so many other things I would rather be doing. 

During five and a half years at university, I took to cooking in the way that many take to exercise, hoping to get it over and done with as soon as possible. At the time, “cooking,” for me, entailed flinging a frozen fishcake in the oven and leaving some root vegetables to boil within an inch of their life while I jumped in the shower or ran upstairs to finish off an assignment. To call my meals half-hearted might be considered an overstatement. 

My minimal efforts led to rather dire creations, including soggy couscous served with tomato sauce straight from the jar and a dash of sliced raw pepper, if I was lucky. For many years, I didn’t seem to care what subpar meals I was preparing for myself. I seemed to endure it and save the real enjoyment for when I was eating out. But when I moved in with an old friend last spring, it suddenly dawned on me that you could enjoy delicious homemade food that was actually enjoyable and relaxing to make. 

Watching my friend throw together weekday curries, pasta dishes and sauces with ease and enthusiasm, I came to see cooking as something to enjoy and a way of expressing creativity rather than the chore that I dreaded. I spent many evenings watching my friend experiment with herbs and spices and dig out more adventurous recipes to try. Suddenly, it became clear to me that I had developed apathy toward cooking because of my upbringing. 

I lived in a house with two parents who worked full-time. Cooking was regarded as one of the many chores that needed doing and one that never brought anyone much joy. It also was never considered a hobby, and no one ever really expressed a desire to try a new recipe or whip up “something special.” But over the past year, all thanks to my friend, I have come to see cooking as an art form rather than a necessity.

I felt so inspired that this Christmas, I decided to make the Christmas dinner all by myself for the first time in my life. So when Christmas Eve came around, I threw on the Michael Bublé album, grabbed a glass of Pinot and got cooking. And surprisingly enough, it became one of the best Christmas Eve memories I can remember. 

COVID-19 had prevented our usual Christmas plans, so I thought it appropriate to serve something a little different. We had a starter of salmon en croute, a main course including duck breast, a nut roast and sweet potato casserole, all the usual trimmings and a dessert of chocolate and Baileys bread and butter pudding, served with brandy cream followed by a rather delectable cheese board. 

The love invested in the preparation only enhanced the atmosphere of love shared around the table during the feast. At that special Christmas Day dinner, the very same sister who exposed my contempt for cooking all those years ago was the same sister who described the food as “surprisingly delicious.”

“You’ve made a mistake, though,” she laughed. “It looks like you’ll be on Christmas dinner duty from now on.”

I’ll admit, I’ll always be partial to eating at a restaurant, but I’m delighted to have turned a page in my cooking life, and I can’t wait to see what culinary adventures I have ahead. I’ve learned an important lesson and realized columnist Harriet Van Horne was right all along. As she once wisely said, “Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”

I’m Learning to Cook With Love

My ex-boyfriend was obsessed with meat. In fact, he was so obsessed with meat that it bordered on pathological. An average evening at our place went something like this: He’d order in vast quantities of hot wings, burgers or fried chicken, then put on a YouTube mukbang as he ate—watching bigger, meatier men shovel down more food than he could manage, in some bizarre cuckolding ritual.

My ex felt no shame about his meat consumption. He saw meals without meat as unworthy and would look down on vegans and vegetarians as if they were some sort of absurd alien species put on Earth for his entertainment. I’d laugh at his jokes, but deep down harbored a tremendous amount of guilt from consuming animals and had for some time. I’d watched and cried over Cowspiracy, Seaspiracy and every video essay on factory farming I could find—but found it shamefully difficult to translate their messages into reality, usually managing a few weeks without meat before caving in. It wasn’t his fault, but it didn’t help that my ex was such a fussy eater. It made sense for us to eat the same things, and there were only three or four home-cooked meals he absolutely loved. All of them contained meat.

At the same time, we were growing apart, in general. Our five-year-long relationship was bone dry in other areas, and our dietary preferences were indicative of a wider gulf emerging between us—one where neither person respected the other’s interests and passions. In the end, we broke up for non-meat-related reasons, and once he moved out, I stopped cooking with it at home. Eating at restaurants, though, was a different story. I was always aching to delve into anything dense, fried and animal-derived. 

I needed something major to shift, something to force me to take meat off the back burner and throw it in the trash for good. Then, I met Tristan.

I matched with Tristan on a dating app last October, the same night I watched The Green Knight at the movie theater. I found this oddly felicitous—Tristan was a vegan chef, animal rights activist and the pseudonym he’d chosen originated from Arthurian legend, the very embodiment of a green knight. We’d spent a few hours texting before I went into the screening—I remember desperately wishing, yearning for the movie and its questionable sex scenes to be over, so I could recommence salivating over his pictures and fantasizing about fucking him instead.

A few days later, we met up at a nearby pub. It was exhilarating—within 10 seconds of us locking eyes, I felt chemistry so intense, it incapacitated me. He was utterly gorgeous in person, with beautiful (if unwashed), long hair, tattoos and tired, sad eyes—a delicious blend of every man I’ve ever been obsessed with since I discovered what men were. Our conversation was slightly staggered and difficult, as if we both knew what would unfold and were simply delaying the inevitable for as long as possible before digging in and devouring each other. Still, I tried my best to listen and make small talk. I had to be polite. 

We spent a substantial chunk of the date discussing the activism he did: protesting for animal rights groups in the city, building shelters for baby animals in the winter, breaking into farms to prevent horses from being euthanized. I was enamored by his boundless devotion to the lives of other beings. It was a welcome change from most of the men I’d dated previously, my ex included—men so fixated on upholding a masculine image that the very acknowledgment of kindness threatened their sensitive palates. I wondered if Tristan’s respect for animals translated into respect for women. I wondered—eyeing him up and down like a snack—if he’d be better in bed.

Within two hours, we’d given into our most animalistic instincts, kissing messily and aggressively, to the dismay of nearby onlookers. Not wanting to put on a show, I dragged him out of the pub and across the park to my place, my brand-new leather Doc Martens cruelly lacerating the backs of my feet as I walked. Tristan had made it clear that he wasn’t a militant vegan and that he didn’t care what I consumed or wore—but already, I was feeling the first sprinklings of shame setting in as I tried to conceal my fashion choices. After a lifetime of being trained for male approval, I wanted him to adore me, and I knew, in his mind, there was nothing less sexy than a girl wearing cow carcasses on her feet. 

Back at mine, we had some of the best sex I’d had in years. Not only did we share many of the same kinks, I found myself feeling so relaxed in his presence that I came multiple times, which doesn’t usually happen. He was passionate, communicative and considerate—a welcome tonic after I’d been force-fed, begrudgingly, on a meager diet of lackluster fucking that had been gradually reduced over the years until there was nothing left. The sex was so good, in fact, that within hours of him leaving the next morning, we’d already debriefed each other about how things went and arranged to meet up again.

Quickly, Tristan and I fell into a friends-with-benefits-type situation.

We’d see each other weekly and have sex all night, leaving my flatmates eternally sleep-deprived and each other equal parts stuffed and hungry for more. I was completely blown away by his sexual appetite—not only did he taste better than any man I’d ever encountered but he could just go and go for hours without even needing to break. I soon wondered whether these things were related to his diet. I wondered if eating like him would award me the same energy levels, the same almost-scentless soft skin, the same strength and abundance of orgasms. 

Partly through narcissism but predominantly through shame, I began to eat fully vegan on days that I’d see Tristan. “He won’t want to kiss me if I’ve eaten meat,” I thought—my lips suddenly a vessel for decades of dead flesh, the bodies of animals from before times still resting on my tongue like passengers on some warped Noah’s Ark. This soon extended to dairy too. Tristan had commented, after once being erroneously served a chai latte with cow’s milk, that he felt a thick, mucus-like film develop in his mouth and linger there for the rest of the day. I couldn’t let him taste that on me. I didn’t want to be the milk film girl. 

It was ironic that I was so afraid of pushing my diet onto a man when I had allowed my own to be dictated by who I was dating my whole life. But as I saw the benefits of a plant-based diet take hold on my own body—as my acne cleared up, my hair grew thicker and my joints stopped aching—it became clear that this decision benefited me as much as it did him. I gradually realized that rather than diluting myself for Tristan, I had been starving myself previously, pushing away what I had always known was best for my body, animals and the planet. I began to reclaim my diet. I stopped eating meat and dairy in any capacity, started watching vegan vlogs and TED Talks on YouTube to educate myself and began collating vegan recipes and cooking them for friends. I relished this time I spent nourishing and replenishing my body and mind. I felt like I knew myself better than I had in years. 

Eventually, I stopped seeing Tristan as often. We still see each other, but our relationship is far more platonic now than it was during our sex marathons. It’s not that what we felt in each other died—though it has certainly been distilled—but rather that our lives began to overflow and swell with other, more pressing activities. He threw himself headfirst into more activism, exercise and a new job at a vegan charity cafe, and I spent time rebuilding my self-esteem and reclaiming my sexuality after my failed relationship and other interpersonal trauma. I now follow a plant-based diet during the week and eat more broadly vegetarian on weekends. Although I’ve not managed to 100 percent eradicate dairy and eggs just yet, I haven’t eaten meat in months, and I plan to never do so again. 

I’ll forever be grateful for the fire Tristan ignited in me and for allowing me to peel back the layers of myself I had once deemed inaccessible. At first, I felt guilty that all of this had been triggered by a man and not the visible slaughter of innocent animals—but I spoke to other friends and realized how common it is to adapt the diets of those we care about before eventually embracing them as our own. At the end of the day, activism comes in all forms, and sinking your teeth into someone new is seemingly just as effective as disseminating propaganda or rallying for animal rights.

In terms of my bedroom activities, I recently had sex with a man who did keto, consuming no carbs and instead supplementing with a substantial amount of meat, and it was as awful as it sounds. Going forward, I think I’ll keep not just meat—but also men who eat it—off the menu as well.

I Gave Up Eating Meat for a Man

I finally arrive in the humid tropics of Iquitos, the Peruvian port city where Maria, my family friend of 10-plus years, is awaiting my return after a year away. Immediately, I smell something, and after all these years of visiting, I know it well. Masato is fermenting in 50-gallon plastic drums as a work party is being organized for the next morning.

“Oye hermano, has vista lo que hemos hecho?”

Maria excitedly guides me over to the drums, showing me the off-white, creamy blend of cassava, water and a young girl's saliva. 

In fact, I remember distinctly expressing the whole process of this unique drink to a beer-brewing professional on a patio in South Florida after the wedding of a mutual friend. In utter fascination, I listened on as he explained his theory as to why the recipe called for saliva. He expressed that in beer brewing, amylase—a particular enzyme—was used to facilitate the fermentation process. He then explained that it was naturally occurring in human mouths, with higher concentrations in women’s mouths.

Maria’s son, Jefferson, wakes up early to dig up some cassava root. I follow him through the field, not minding the morning dew soaking my clothes as we walk briskly through the low-lying jungle fog. A freshly dug plant has several roots cut away, peeled, chopped and set to boil. I remember the cooking process taking about an hour. Then, after the roots are soft, the pot is pulled off the fire to cool. 

Jefferson lays out the now-cooled roots into a dug-out log, sort of like a canoe, and begins to pound them with a blunt staff made from a beautiful red hardwood called palo sangre. DUUM DUUM. The thuds are rhythmic and blend with the bird songs above. 

I ask for a turn and start to pound the soft roots into a creamy slurry. As I'm working, the sticky goop begins to take shape, and Jefferson's sister and cousins begin to take their positions nearby.

"Why do you all ferment the cassava roots?" I ask Jefferson between thuds.

He looks at me with a strange countenance, the kind you receive after asking about something so strange and foreign to me and so commonplace to him. "We ferment the roots so they can last," he says. "The masa can be kept for weeks and then have water added to it whenever we want so we can drink. It also changes the flavor and texture a lot. It's just always what we have done with this plant. You don't ferment cassava in your country?" 

"Jefferson, I am the only person I know, as of now, who ferments cassava where I live," I reply. "I'd like to document the process of what you all do so I can share with my friends and people who also grow this fantastic plant. It's a real treasure what you all know here."

"And who spits in your yuca for you!?" he asks curiously while holding back laughter.

"I do! I don't have daughters, and I'm definitely not asking anyone else to do this!" 

Jefferson erupts in laughter. "Only the women are supposed to chew and spit the roots back in!" 

I laugh with him and at the fact that this is what it looks like to attempt to emulate a practice without its place. It takes a village, indeed.

The cassava roots are an unrecognizable mess at this point, and the hard work is over. Now the chewing and spitting ensue. The girls are happy to partake in the family ritual and begin taking spoonfuls of the mash and chewing it thoroughly and, after 30 seconds or so, spitting it back into the dug-out canoe. 

I'm taking photos and thinking back to stories I was told about the importance of partaking in the consumption of this masato beverage. To decline is to put yourself outside of the circle, to embody the opposite of communal care, at least in their eyes. To engage and accept is to say yes to life itself, as the microbes present in this fermented beverage are very much alive in every way. 

The mass of yuca only had about 20 chewed up and spit out spoonfuls, maybe two percent of the total, but it's just enough to jumpstart the fermentation process.

Thinking back to the brewer's words about amylase, I start to imagine the enzyme helping to break down the starch. Jefferson brings over some towels, and at this point, the vat is covered—limiting flies and critters from entering—and is allowed to ferment. In this souring process, I remember Maria telling me that the nutrition of the cassava is improved upon and helps their people stay healthy.

"Sort of how we take probiotics," I tell Jefferson. "Sort of how our European family eats sauerkraut. The culinary traditions of fermentation span the world."

Two days later, a massive bowl twice the size of a normal breakfast cereal serving gets handed to me in the morning. Maria has a huge smile on her face as I lift the bowl to my mouth and begin eating my liquid meal. It's sour, thick and a touch sweet from some additional sugar which the elders normally frown upon. 

A few minutes later, I am through the bowl and pass it full to Maria's husband, Gabriel. The slight buzz is undeniable. He thanks me for the pass and has that look on his face saying, "Yeah, you're back, aren't you?"

"Traditionally," Gabriel shares, "the people gather for shared work, like clearing land for a small farm or help to build a neighbor’s house. They call this the minga, and it's without a doubt that masato will be present in several five-gallon buckets to support the process. It keeps us full and lets us be joyful while we work."

I recall following his cousin Isaias as he, seemingly without effort, carried a drum with several hundred pounds worth of masato in it across uneven earth and slippery clay spots exposed by a recent rain. We were en route to clear land with a machete and chainsaw in order to plant more bananas, cassava and corn. There was a certain flow to the day, working in phases of strong energy and then taking collective breaks and being served masato as we rested in the shade of the cetico trees overhead. 

A machete in my hand, I consider the communal tool that is this fermented root drink. It gathers the people together under a shared cause and allows for tradition to live on in a daily way. The daydream is broken by Gabriel's quick steps toward the farm to cut some racks of plantains for the day's lunch.

"The ancestral food ways that still exist in the world are critical to our understanding of how to be in best relationship to nature," Gabriel says. "We are here to steward these technologies and make sure they are preserved for generations to come—and to share them with those who come from so far away to learn them, like you, brother."

Gabriel's words rested deeply in me, and I carry them to this day. I'm reminded of them when I walk through my cassava plantings here in Florida, giving gratitude for such amazing beings that grow so readily. The wind blows through the palmate-like leaves of cassava plants overhead, almost beckoning me to visit my friends again—and share some masato.

Cassava Life: Guzzling the Saliva-Fermented Drink of the Amazon

There’s something so soothing to me about the process of rinsing uncooked rice. The grains make that pleasant tingly sound when you measure them into a metal bowl. The water clouds slowly as the starch leeches off the surface of the grains. When I run my hands through the mixture, making sure each grain has been adequately washed, I get the same calming sensation you might feel when you’re letting wet sand fall through your fingers at the beach. 

Though I may seem passionate about it now, I haven’t always been an enthusiast for the sensory delights of one of the world’s most important crops. Growing up in the American South, I often heard people say that “rice was invented to hold up beans.” To me, it was always a boring blank canvas to be painted over with your flavor of choice. Though I hate to admit it, there was a time when I didn’t even know you were supposed to rinse rice before cooking it. As it turns out, that was just the first in a long line of things I didn’t know about the food I was eating.

When you’re from the South, people tend to have expectations about the contents of your diet. It’s all grits, corn bread, collard greens and, the perennial Southern staple, fried chicken. This isn’t always so far from the truth for those of us lucky enough to have lived in a place with such a rich food culture. The South is home to many iconic American dishes that keep the tourists coming and the restaurant economy booming. It’s easy enough to see why people can’t get enough shrimp and grits or red beans and rice. But where did all of these famous foods come from?

It wasn’t until I moved away from home, and my mom’s cooking, that I really started thinking about the foods I had grown up eating and loving. Being removed from the source of the best home cooking forced me into a mode of discovery. If I wanted something, and wanted it to taste good, I had to cook it myself. It seemed like a daunting task but one I was ready to tackle. 

The first recipe I set out to master was a humble pot of grits. Being the extremely thorough researcher that I am, I combed through dozens of internet recipes looking for one that seemed to fit. There are many strong and differing opinions on how to consume the creamy concoction of ground corn, but I stayed loyal to the tried-and-true savory approach. It was during this process that my understanding of Southern food started to take shape.

I had always assumed that grits, which are little more than ground bits of corn, originated with the native people who inhabited the current day United States long before they were the United States. While partially true, that was only a small part of the story of how grits ended up in a pot on my electric stove. Their beginnings as an American food staple can actually be traced to enslaved people from West Africa.  

Corn was often a part of the meager rations given to enslaved people who were forced to labor in the fields of Southern plantations. Despite the brutality they faced on a daily basis and the sparse resources they were given to work with, enslaved people created a dish that transcended their horrific circumstances. As I would find out, grits then took a common route from being enslaved fare to plantation home staple. Through an incredible amount of knowledge, ingenuity and creativity, enslaved people turned rations that weren’t suitable for human consumption into one of the most celebrated Southern foods of all time.

It was nothing short of an epiphany for me to think about the history of the dish I’d eaten so often as a child. When I took my first stab at cooking them on my own, each tiny grain seemed heavier and more precious to me. Learning the history of grits pushed me to dig deeper, to find the source of each familiar dish I set out to cook.

As I went on my Southern-themed culinary journey, I noticed an unmistakable thread that connected each dish. When I wanted to add shrimp to my grits, I found a similar story. Shrimp haven’t always been the pricey items sold at an ever-rising market value on menus at the fanciest restaurants in Charleston. At one time, they were easy pickings for enslaved people who could sneak out to the creeks in the Lowcountry of South Carolina to supplement their inadequate rations.

Even after the Civil War and the ratification of the 13th Amendment, shrimp remained a key food source for freed people who were forced into the undesirable outskirts of the coastal plains. They held the knowledge to use the food at which white people would turn up their noses. Their expertise was passed down from generation to generation, going all the way back to the shores of Africa. Shrimp and grits, one of the South’s most celebrated dishes, was the brainchild of enslaved people who made something out of nothing. I grew up eating it, and I never had a clue.

After learning this, my curiosity was insatiable. I learned that fried chicken gained its popularity predominantly from the hard work of Black women who were seeking a way to make money after gaining their freedom. They perfected the art of breading and frying chicken in hot oil to give us the dish celebrated around the world today. I learned that people who were kidnapped from Western Africa and sold into slavery kept seeds for okra, beans and rice braided into their hair, and the presence of these crops denoted a population of enslaved people who grew them for sustenance.

All of this information was just out there waiting for me to find it. It didn’t become any more important or critical for me having learned it. So many brilliant chefs and food historians, like Michael Twitty and Mashama Bailey, had been sharing their hard-found knowledge with anyone willing to listen. Unfortunately, not many people seemed interested in hearing it.

Today, if you take a trip to Charleston or Savannah, you’ll find a restaurant serving these dishes around every corner. The products of generations of labor and strife that were endured by enslaved people are being sold by predominately white chefs at a premium. These foods are the economic foundation of much of the South, but the context of their origin has been wiped out. As a white Southerner, it irritates me to see the history of these foods erased in the name of financial gain. I can only imagine how it pains the folks who carry the DNA of those who invented Southern cuisine under the cruel hand of slaveholders.

We have a tremendous opportunity as Southerners to be honest about the origins of the food we hold so dear—not as a way to keep people from cooking or eating it but as a way to educate and showcase the true cultural richness of Southern food. People stand only to gain from understanding the painful and brutal history of the food they eat. The persistence of these dishes mirrors the persistence and perseverance of enslaved people, who wouldn’t allow their traditions or their spirits to be crushed by the weight of those who made them their property.

This food should be a story of triumph for Black people who carry these traditions with them today, but sadly, it continues to be a story of exploitation. If we continue to depend on these foods to hold Southern states together, we must also, at the very least, give credit where it is long overdue. Kids in the South shouldn’t grow up eating stewed okra every Sunday for lunch completely ignorant of where it originated. Tourists shouldn’t leave the beaches of South Carolina or Georgia without knowing the conditions under which their favorite meals were developed.

It seems like an insurmountable task with how far gone the Southern culinary industry is, but like most cultural movements, it can start with individuals. Eat at restaurants that showcase the work of Black chefs; read the literature on the history of Southern food and its inextricable links to slavery; tell people about the way enslaved people built a cuisine from the things that white people threw away. Maybe then we can slowly start to showcase the brilliance behind the dishes people will travel across the world to eat.

My most recent Southern food fascination is rice. With delicious Gullah dishes like Hoppin’ John or Limpin’ Susan, I can’t get enough of the stuff. In colonial times, Carolina Gold rice was the crop that made slaveholders in South Carolina—and Charleston, in particular—extremely wealthy. Rice cultivation, like the cultivation of so many other crops, was only tenable through the back-breaking work of enslaved people. It had to be grown in the coastal plains where water flowed in and out throughout the day, flooding the fields and allowing the rice to grow. After it grew, it was only the enslaved people of West Africa who knew the incredibly labor-intensive process of harvesting it, and they did it under abhorrent circumstances.

Now, when I’m washing my rice, when I take care to rinse and re-rinse each pot, it’s a meditation of sorts. It’s a time to remember the human cost associated with the things that I serve at my dinner table. When I run my fingers through the grains and shake them dry, I think about the path they’ve taken to get to me. I feel grateful and most of all, hopeful that other people will know that path, too.

One Grain at a Time: Learning the History of Southern Food

Cooking was a huge part of my childhood. My mother was an accomplished cook, and despite having a very busy career as a doctor, she loved to wind down by creating elaborate meals on the weekend. I was raised on a steady diet of Indian food, which she learned to cook during her college days, along with a range of other dishes rarely seen in most Irish kitchens at the time. My love of cooking stemmed from these experiences, and as I grew into a young adult, my sister and I spent more and more time in the kitchen perfecting our own skills. 

But cooking was not something I ever considered as a career. As I waded through my final year of high school and considered my college choice options, I was disgusted when my father suggested that I consider a career as a chef. I thought it was beneath me. To my mind, cooking was a hobby, not a career. I did it for pleasure. I had no intention of turning something I loved into an actual job. 

As I grew older, still struggling to find the right career path, I began to reconsider. I knew I didn’t want to be a chef, but the idea of running my own small cafe held immense appeal. I visualized myself spending hours designing menus and researching niche suppliers to create something unique. Eventually, in 2015, the opportunity to open my own cafe with a financial investment from my partner presented itself. Despite my misgivings, I hastily jumped on the bandwagon, caught up in the momentum and excitement around the project. 

The cafe was located in a college town just outside Dublin. With 10,000 students living in the town and a wealthy population, everything looked good on paper. The previous owners had put a lot of time and money into it, creating a business that was both profitable and successful. The cafe was the place to go for the wealthy ladies who lunch, and the day I received the keys to the business, it was packed to capacity. It was also the day that the head chef quit with no notice, leaving me with junior staff trying to hold it together. 

I froze. It suddenly dawned on me that I had no idea what I was doing, and my fear was palpable. The staff viewed me with suspicion, and I knew that they sensed my inexperience like blood in the water. My first day in charge was a blur, and at my tiny desk in the makeshift office above the cafe, panic flooded through me as I realized there was no going back.

Things fell apart very quickly. I had no confidence in my ability, and it was obvious to all around me. I struggled through the first year with a rotation of staff who never stayed long enough to learn the necessary skills. Those who had worked there prior to my taking over resented me and any changes I tried to make within the business. They knew better than me. The customers, too, were resistant to change, and when I eventually revamped the menu, it was met with disdain. They didn’t want a new menu and, time and time again, I was reminded of this. 

Through all this mayhem and confusion, the crowds started to dwindle, and the profits began to fall. Stress became my constant companion. I began to hate the cafe and all that was related to it. The bills began to mount up, and it wasn’t long before my taxes became overdue. 

I had taken on the cooking duties, churning out a seemingly endless stream of bread, cakes, scones, soups and salads, all the while hiding from the world in the steamy confines of the kitchen. I took solace in cooking, but my lack of confidence and business acumen was taking a deadly toll on the business. Every day was a struggle to make ends meet. My responsibilities weighed on me heavily, while the staff viewed me with growing contempt and suspicion. I began to hate going to work. 

My dream had become the ultimate nightmare. 

Through all of this, my partner looked on aghast at how I was handling things, yet offered little or no support. Anytime I tried to bring up the subject of how I was struggling, he told me he didn’t want to know—“Just sort it out.” I stopped trying to talk to him and retreated into myself more and more. The bills were becoming unmanageable, and I knew I was on a path of complete destruction, yet I felt powerless to stop it. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, powerless to avoid the inevitable collision. And when it finally came, it was spectacular. 

My landlord had become increasingly frustrated with rent being late, and our relationship had soured, to say the least. When I arrived to work one fateful day, I plodded up the stairs to the kitchen, weary already, although the day had barely begun. Turning my key, I was baffled for a moment when the door refused to give way. Suddenly, it dawned on me. I had been locked out. The landlord had come overnight and changed the locks on the premises with no warning whatsoever. My mind went numb, and my body followed as a panic attack consumed me. I also felt awash with a strange sense of relief. The worst had happened. I had hit rock bottom, and the only way was up—or at least that’s what I hoped. It was finally over. 

Of course, I was wrong about that, as I had been about so much. What followed was a long, drawn-out legal battle with the landlord. We tried to recoup some of the money that my partner had invested in it. He could barely look at me, and I couldn’t blame him. His life savings had been obliterated in a matter of weeks, and I was the only one to blame. For a time, I was convinced we wouldn’t make it through, such was his disdain for me, but eventually, the wounds began to heal, and we found our way back to each other. We were scarred for sure, but we lived to tell the tale—although he won’t be investing in any business with me anytime soon. And that’s just fine by me.

I Ran My Own Restaurant—Into the Ground

As a health professional and food expert, I always thought the biggest issue my clients faced around food was a lack of knowledge—about what foods to eat, about why to eat them, about why to avoid others, about how they impact health. The list of reasons goes on. 

But I realized that I actually got it all wrong. Here’s why: At the start of my career as a dietitian and nutritionist, learning about food and its effects on health made perfect sense. Eating healthy was obviously a no-brainer. In addition to this, working in the health industry and watching the rise of social media as a means to get information gave me a boost of inspiration to be a good example.

My own eating habits became more than perfect, and I found myself obsessing over eating well, counting calories, not having any processed sugar or refined foods, alcohol, soft drinks or any other crap I deemed demonic to my well-being. 

I lived like this for over three years. I was running and training at the gym everyday, I planned my meals, filled my cupboard with supplements and had a nonexistent social life. I felt extremely disappointed at my friends who ate crap and even at my clients who couldn’t give up the junk food. I’d constantly think to myself: “What is wrong with you people?”

But then my body started to break down. I woke up one day and couldn’t get out of bed. My muscles were so sore, my knees hurt, my back was wrecked and I couldn’t stand up straight. My hair started falling out; my nails were splitting. Mentally, I was a mess. 

During this time, I attended a nutrition seminar about the effects of social media on the health of young adults, and I realized I had something called orthorexia. This is an eating disorder characterized by an obsession with eating healthy, where the quality of the food is more important than anything else. There I was, thinking I couldn’t eat too healthy, when orthorexia was, in fact, detrimental to my health. 

Upon reflecting on my eating habits, it all made sense. I was becoming obsessed with my body image, with training, with eating fresh and overly healthy. And social media was only fueling my need to be perfect with all its readily available “health advice.” I was only 24 years old at the time, and the realization that my obsession made me so ill and miserable was hard to take. My “healthy” lifestyle hurt me deeply, both physically and emotionally. And on top of it all, I was supposed to be the example to my clients. How?

I put so much pressure on myself to be perfect and eat the best possible food that I lost connection with what being healthy actually means.

Letting go of my strict eating patterns was hard at the start. I needed help. After a while, I learned to enjoy a scoop of ice cream or a bowl of pasta without feeling guilty or sick. At the same time, I felt so disappointed in myself. After all, I’m the only one responsible for my health…or am I?

Looking at my own experience and at my clients’ struggles, it became clear to me that the problem ran deeper than what I initially thought. Working in health and looking after people’s nutrition, in my case, has proven to be a challenge—a personal challenge. I obsess over it, all day, every day, but it’s been a real struggle to compete with the constant push for overconsumption and the dead-set pressure to be a certain way.

Our social structure and public health systems put much of the responsibility for being healthy on the individual alone. It is my choice to eat something or engage in a certain activity. No one is forcing me, right? But how can I or my clients rely solely on our willpower to “do the right thing” when: 

Social media platforms enable influencers and celebrities to promote fad diets and give unsound nutrition advice without consequences? 

There is so much pressure on us to be “perfect.” But what does it even mean when most of what is shared on social media is edited and cherry-picked to portray a reality that is not?

We are no longer involved in the food preparation process? 

The food and supplement industry continues promoting and selling magic pills and “health foods” that are extremely bad to our health?

National dietary guidelines are so damn confusing and are still getting it wrong?

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