“Have you considered quitting your job?”
A counselor asked me this once while I was in outpatient treatment. It feels a little wild in hindsight that this was the first and only time someone suggested leaving my career in food while being treated for anorexia. We were in group therapy, and I’d just shared with her and my fellow patients that I was having trouble navigating my dietitian-assigned meal plan on menu tasting days. I’d recently been promoted to assistant pastry chef at the French bakery where I worked, so I was participating in menu development meetings and helping to test recipes, and it felt unfair to have to do this on top of trying to eat a full meal plan. I was sharing my struggles in the hopes for modifications to my diet, not for a prescription to abandon my dreams.
“Not forever, but maybe while you dig deeper into treatment…” she continued.
I remained silent. Perhaps she thought I was reflecting on the power of this request, but I was actually cursing her and laughing at the small scope of her imagination. Where she might have seen a conflict of interest, a toxic relationship, or an unnecessary burden on my recovery, I saw the answer. Being a chef—or more correctly, the best pastry chef in the world—was the only way forward.
“I don’t think so,” I finally asserted, and I pulled my knees into my chest as I sat back in the cozy loveseat, attempting to signal that I was no longer open to suggestions.
As she moved on to one of the others who actually needed her lame advice, I sat ruminating over her insinuation. She thought time and space away from baking might help me, that I couldn’t handle the responsibility of making food for other people. She didn’t think that I appreciated how challenging it was to work with foods that I loved deeply and thought I couldn’t eat? She didn’t think my mouth begged for a tasting spoon full of warm pastry cream, the comfort of vanilla beans teasing my nostrils in the supple custard? She had no idea how hard it was to decline ham and cheese croissants that had burst open with Comte cheese or pistachio cookies that had collided with one another in the oven. She couldn’t grasp the intimate and disciplined relationship I’d created with food through baking. My ability to manipulate sugar into caramel and laminate doughs with rich, dense butter until they became impossibly light croissants was all I had left.
I’d committed to becoming the best pastry chef in the world because I loved and cherished food but thought I could not handle the responsibility of eating. I’d grown up basking in the recipes of Grandma Ruby and the Midwestern casseroles that warmed us in the evenings. I also grew up in a body that peers and teachers and adults had a lot of opinions about. I was tall, and I weighed more than people seemed to approve of. But when I grew even taller in high school and stretched out like taffy, the reviews were glowing, people loved it. They loved thin me. I’d determined that life would only get sweeter if I continued getting thinner, and that didn’t mean I had to give up food entirely.
Baking for others became my way of indulging one of my deepest pleasures while keeping control of the size of my body. My nostalgia for licking the chocolate chip cookie dough from my mom’s hand mixer attachments lived on as I scooped hotel pans of cookies at the bakery. Watching others gush over the crackly, lavender shell of a macaron giving way to honey buttercream filled me up so it was easier to convince myself that I didn’t need to indulge in one myself. I dedicated all of my energy to learning everything I could about baking and pastries and running a kitchen and a cafe and making coffee drinks. For a long time after this encounter with my group therapy counselor, I believed that if I could just get to a place where I opened the best bakery in the world while maintaining my thin, cute pastry chef appeal, I would finally feel peace.
I nourished others, not just literally with food but by conjuring memories, creating new experiences, making them feel at home. What I did not see at the time was that the more energy I put into loving others with my croissants and casseroles, the further away from love I felt for myself. With every new recipe that I created, riffing on something from my childhood and every dinner party I threw for my friends, I could more easily define the ways that my body couldn’t handle the responsibility of this type of love. I could pinpoint all of the ways in which I did not deserve the same level of care and consideration that I put into the cakes and pies and loaves of bread that others soaked in with abandon. The cycle of allowing myself only tiny tastes of my work while watching others revel in the flavors and warmth never felt abnormal, it felt like the proper order of things. I always felt like I was getting closer to the truth, and that truth was wrecking my relationship with myself.
I feel so sorry for that version of me. I feel so sorry that she thought she didn’t deserve to eat or that she didn’t deserve care and consideration. I feel sorry that the world affirmed, time and time again, that she could be more successful, more loved, more human as a thin person. It’s so confusing to have part of yourself derive a sort of sadistic pleasure from spending long hours baking while depriving your own body of nourishment. I still hear her. The pleas for me to stop eating slices of mint cookie pie and focaccia pizza gurgle just beneath the surface. She begs me to wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning and work until dusk. Sometimes I’m nostalgic for the times when people complimented my body and asked “how do you stay so thin working in a bakery!?” I don’t miss how much I hated myself in the aftermath of this question.
I quit working in the restaurant industry almost three years ago now, and I still have a lot to unpack about how my drive to cook and bake might—and might not—have been motivated by my eating disorder and all of its harmful baggage. My love for food, I’m certain, is my authentic self; it was baked into my bones long before I could have chosen otherwise. What I still struggle to do is to love food without asserting absolute control over how I eat and cook with it. I still struggle to love it without letting it be the driving force of my life, the center of my world. As with any relationship, attempts to control and give all of oneself to another is not true love. It’s not sustainable love. Reflecting on this counselor’s request has brought up some interesting considerations as I continue to write recipes and host dinner parties and plan trips to new restaurants regularly. As many in recovery for eating disorders often point out, healing is a particularly tall order for us because we cannot survive without some relationship with food. But how close is too close? Is continuing to pursue a path in any way related to the food world safe and healthy for me? Even though my core reminds me of the power and joy of food and cooking and sharing meals with people every day, is it a love that I just have to let go?
I don’t know. I’m hoping that continuing to write and reflect will help me discover new ways to love food. For right now, at this moment, all I know is that I have to eat lunch.
Peanut Butter & Strawberry Sandwich
If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve eaten peanut butter in some fashion 90% of my days. As a child, it was lunch nearly every day between two puffy slices of white bread, and as I grew older, it became my favorite garnish for my morning oatmeal. Throughout all of my treatments and times of healing, peanut butter has proven to be a tried and true friend.
So, as I am feeling like I need a good friend today, let’s make my favorite peanut butter sandwich. The strawberry sauce is loose and sweet and takes little effort to prepare—unlike a jam. The inspiration is a little shop in Columbus, Ohio called Krema. They sell peanut butter sandwiches and milkshakes in the back of their candy shop, and they’re divine. If you have time to make yourself a vanilla milkshake along with your sandwich today, it’s a stellar combination.
Strawberry Sauce
½ pound strawberries (fresh if they’re in season, frozen if they aren’t
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
Whisk together the lemon juice and cornstarch.
Add this lemon juice mixture and the sugar and berries into a small saucepan. Cook over a medium heat until the mixture comes to a boil, stirring occasionally. Once boiling, stir regularly, and as the strawberries start to soften (if they’re fresh, this won’t take long, if they’re frozen, maybe five minutes into cooking) smush them with your spoon or spatula. Once all of the berries have broken down a bit and the mixture is a thick sauce, like you might put on ice cream, remove from the heat. Stir in the vanilla.
Allow to cool a bit before making your sandwiches, but I do think it’s wonderful a little warm with the peanut butter. I’m not going to tell you how to make a peanut butter sandwich, that feels insulting. I will say, this is also delicious with almond butter (looking at you, Robert, my peanut allergy little brother).
Love to you <3
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