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Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
I have finally reached a place I never thought imaginable … I now enjoy cooking for my family. It took the delivery of a weekly produce box to do it.
I have always been able to cook; I was brought up watching my mum cook family meals, and was even taught cooking skills in high school that I still use to this day. It just felt like being able to plan ahead for a week’s worth of groceries, commit to making all those meals, and actually using up ingredients was an insurmountable task for me. Leftover produce from recipes would either wither and rot in my fridge in their plastic packages, forcing me to deal with washing out their slimy remains or face the guilt of throwing the whole item in the trash to sit in a landfill forever more. Most of the time, it was just easier to grab takeout on the way home.
In my 30s, with a young family to feed, the pressure to cook at home and keep costs down increased.
My husband also knows how to cook, follow recipes, make tasty meals and we split the responsibility but constant planning, the trips to grab last minute ingredients, the food waste – it was never ending, and we hated it. We would get into a rhythm of cooking meals that ensured we used up our groceries and then get completely sick of the sight of the meal after a few months and have to start again.
An obvious solution would have been signing up for a meal kit delivery service, but it just felt so dystopian to me, to be sent a rations box with a preportioned amount of carrot slices in a sad little packet. I understand why this is a great solution and meets a need but I didn’t want to do it.
Instead, I chose to sign up for a weekly produce box. This veggie box delivery from our local grocery store provides a family of 3 to 5 with enough produce for one week. The contents vary each week, depending on the season, and generally include local produce where possible. Cooking this way is a much more daunting task. You don’t really know what you are getting so it requires you to plan your meals around what you have and be resourceful and creative. This was a steep learning curve, but the payoff has been life changing.
Cooking with our “mystery produce” meant I had to become fluent in cooking, planning meals and managing food. It required learning broader skills, such as understanding what each ingredient brings to a meal to be able to make substitutions, experiment and feel adept and creative in the kitchen. It was a challenge that involved a lot of practice, patience and taking a more holistic approach to understanding food.
Now, instead of starting the week with the dreaded task of meal planning and putting together a grocery list, I am excited to find out what has arrived in my produce box and go from there. Maybe I can roast up some root vegetables, cook up some rice and lentils, and add some leafy greens on the side with a tahini dressing. I can make a soup with this squash and some of those carrots. I can make a pasta sauce using up some of the pantry ingredients I make sure to stock up on. The possibilities feel exciting, and the variety of seasonal ingredients keep the basic meal templates feeling fresh and interesting (roasted vegetables with rice and dressing! Soup! Pasta sauce!).
It has made me appreciate domesticity as a real skill. It’s about more than just cooking. It is about managing fresh produce and knowing what pantry items to stock up on. It involves learning how to put together meals without following strict recipes, and the freedom and creativity that this provides is what makes cooking fun and something I now enjoy. I have learned more about our local produce, I understand growing seasons and gardening and started growing my own herbs and produce in a tiny little garden bed. I hope that I can involve my children so that they can grow up to be excited and curious about food and cooking for themselves – even if they still prefer chicken nuggets.
Theresa Ramirez lives in Hamilton.