The Weight Of Dinner

the invisible cage of cooking for others

Flora Yukhnovich, Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner, 2018.

Welcome to Stir the Pot. There are a lot of new faces around here, so I thought this week I would spend some time going over the plot. I’m Michelle. I’ve been cooking for a living for the last 12 years and have been vegan for over two decades. I’ve written multiple bestselling cookbooks, hundreds of newsletters, and plenty of articles for magazines and newspapers. Despite my professional success, my work has always been primarily domestic. This dichotomy- working for a living by cooking in private- has left me vulnerable to the same sort of mistreatment that so many women in our country are giving voice to right now. Just look around. From

Maggie Smith

’s memoir outlining how her husband couldn’t handle her new professional success to

lyz

Lenz showing us in her bestselling This American Ex Wife how the burden of domestic labor can end a marriage, women are finally saying all the quiet parts out loud.

MaryJane

Gibson chronicled her own experience last week of carrying water for men who abuse her in the process. I could go on and on. Everyone is so fucking tired, and dinner plays a huge part.

I start most of my mornings at the grocery store, grabbing all the ingredients I need in aisles filled with moms shopping for food that the rest of their family thinks just appears. I work and cook in my small home kitchen creating recipes for people to make in their own small home kitchens. It never stops. People always need help figuring out what to cook and I love to help. But this work I do, and that so many of us do in our own homes, is rarely valued as real work. Emotional labor was identified four decades ago by socialist Arlie Hochschild as the skill American service workers had to perform in addition to their work that wasn’t expected of workers in the previously male-dominated manufacturing sector. Journalist Rose Hackman defines it in the modern era as “The primordial training that, before anything else, women and girls should edit the expression of their emotions to accommodate and elevate the emotions of others.” This is expected from us at work, in public spaces, and most insidiously at home and in our relationships with other adults. 

I’ve written all five of my cookbooks hidden behind a brand. I’ve created hundreds of recipes, writing “we” in the text instead of “I” to erase the signs of my own labor. No one helped me create these recipes, shop for the ingredients, cook them over and over, and then pour my knowledge of food onto the page for you to consume. No one but me. I can’t remember how that erasure started but when I refused to keep it up, things fell apart. I wanted my labor to count. My work was our work, but that rule only applied to me. Every morning, I shopped alone, getting what I needed to create the recipes I had dreamed up for that week. I had to keep track of everything I had in my kitchen at home and my kitchen in my “office,” which was just a rented apartment where I pretended to live from 9 to 5 each day because my domestic labor needed a domestic cage. This cost my business, and by extension myself, lots of extra money and me lots of extra time. Was I out of cinnamon at home or at work? Did I finish the almond milk last week? How behind will I be if I have to make two trips to the store? That cognitive labor was just for me. Every day.

I would have preferred to work in my home kitchen where I could easily keep track of everything, prep ahead of time, and generally be more comfortable and creative, but in my two-person business, I lost most votes — until I stopped voting. It was just assumed that I would be more flexible. I was just cooking after all. My workspace was the kitchen and the couch in the living room that was brought in to complete the veneer of domesticity. Sure, I had to create a recipe that was both inventive and practical, didn’t use too many exotic ingredients but also wasn’t boring, that was easy enough to cook, and tasted delicious to the largest swath of people possible. I had to cook it enough times to make my instructions clear enough that the audience could replicate it successfully, and I had to make it pretty enough for people to want to cook it in the first place. But all of that was nothing compared to having to set up some lights and a camera stand. The act of photographing the food was treated as more valuable than the creation and styling of the food every single time. My labor was invisible unless it was captured in a photo. Then it was art; then it was real work. I was replaceable, or so I was told every time I complained, even though without my food there would be nothing. No brand, no books, no podcast, no money (though I didn’t get my fair share of the money either). In her book Emotional Labor, Hackman puts it succinctly: “The best way to maintain a system in which women work for little to nothing, and for the benefit of others, especially men, is to convince society that they are not working at all.” I cannot tell you all the times I was told I did nothing, that no one would want to work with me all by myself.  It kept me there. I couldn’t see that I was already working alone because that work was made invisible. It was a long 12 years. 

This isn’t a surprise to anyone who has become the primary caregiver and/or cook at home. The act of getting food on the table has been viewed historically as women’s work, some innate vocation that we feel called to do and thus cannot even be counted as work. It’s like wearing two invisibility cloaks stacked on one another. And here I was arguing for more recognition, more appreciation, for a job that is rarely even noticed. I didn’t stand a chance. Add a heterosexual cis white man to this equation, and it gets even worse. This isn’t my opinion, I have statistical evidence to back me up. In Geraldine De Ruiter’s new book If You Can’t Take The Heat: Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury she outlines what so many of us have seen play out in our own homes or those around us. 

“According to a study published by the Pew Research Center in 2019, among heterosexual couples who cohabitate, women are much more likely to prepare meals than their male partners, and much more likely to grocery shop. Seventy-one percent of mothers said they took on both of these tasks, compared with only 11 percent of dads who did. But the biggest issue is that this discrepancy isn’t even perceived by many men: Dads are twice as likely as moms to say that these chores are split evenly. Men believe that they’re doing more work around meals and grocery shopping than they actually are.”

The numbers stay relatively the same when there are no children involved. This isn’t because women aren’t working. Only 4.7% of families in 2022 contained someone who wasn’t part of the workforce. The vast majority of families in North America have two adults working full time, with 80% of mothers working full time and 95% of fathers. Everybody is working their asses off but only some people are expected to stay on the clock 24/7. I’m not saying there aren’t some men doing their part, I see them here in the comments and in my own life. But when we look at the big picture, it’s the women who are suffering time and time again. In my own marriage, we squabble over chores like all couples, but unlike so many marriages, we aren’t fighting over reality. We can both see the labor and effort it takes to run a home and maintain a marriage. We aren’t gaslighting each other to see who can get away with doing the least. It means meeting both of our expectations in equal measure, not preserving fragile egos out of fear of the repercussions. Labor is labor.

Joan Semmel, Centered, 2002.

That’s why I broke away and started Stir the Pot. I want my labor to count, and I want to help make your labor a little less burdensome. Let’s share the weight of dinner. Cooking is an art form that is also a daily, never-ending chore. Even the most passionate cooks have days where they just can’t whip up one more thing. It's often the combined pressure cooker of obligation and invisibility that turns cooking into the most hated chore. In her viral 2018 essay for Glamour, Lenz talks about how she will never cook dinner for a man again after her divorce: “It’s hard for me to understand when cooking became more repression than liberation, more an act of obligation than act of creation… This thing that had sustained me now felt like a prison.”  We can all relate. How long do you keep laboring for people who feel entitled to your work, but don’t acknowledge your constant efforts? How long do you financially support someone who cosplays with your job while denigrating it in private? No matter the answer, I think it’s been long enough. Planning out meals, shopping for the food, preparing the food while keeping in mind everyone’s preferences and tastes, cleaning up, and doing it day after day is a shit ton of work. Let’s acknowledge that. It’s why Lenz had to quit: “I stopped cooking because I wanted to feel as unencumbered as a man walking through the door of his home with the expectation that something had been done for him.” Respect.

Kacey can read the room. Her new album is out now

But I don’t want you to quit. I want to help. Not because your family deserves it, but because you do.

I think learning to cook for yourself, and cooking all your meals with some regularity is one of the best things you can do for the planet, your wallet, and your health. But I don’t want you to go insane trying to be perfect. We all do our best and when you need me, I am here to help. Those five cookbooks are still full of endless ideas for dinner; I wrote them that way. Here on Substack, I sell you my labor so that your days are easier, so that you have plenty of ideas, and when you get in a pickle, I am here to help you troubleshoot. In my new Pot-casts I chat with you as we make each new recipe together, from start to finish. You can message me whenever you need help finding a substitution, want ideas for a dinner party, or can’t figure out what went wrong in your last meal. Most importantly, I see you. You aren’t crazy. I’m struggling right along with you, because the system is rigged. Let’s be tired together; I’ll bring the snacks. 

Disclaimer: if you have someone in your life that doesn’t appreciate your labor, I don’t know if there is a hotline you can call to voice your complaint — but here in the comments, we welcome you.'