Today is Christian Orthodox Easter. I don’t celebrate for religious reasons (I’m not religious), but like many I fall prey to nostalgia and find myself wanting to reacreate the Easters of my childhood: the special foods, the treats, the smells, the excitement of egg dyeying, the joy of coming together with loved ones over meticulously cooked meals that celebrate the tastes and ingredients of spring.
As an Eastern European in Western Europe, every year around this time I start the Great Search for Ingredients That Are Uncommon in This Country. I trawl so-called Eastern European and Middle Eastern stores for sweet cow’s milk curds, fatty sour cream (the proper kind), thick-ground semolina, giblets, egg dye of course, strong red wine made from the sweet-sour grapes in the vines that line the hills of Romania (nothing else will do). I deplore the absolute lack of green garlic in the markets of this country and use spring onions instead, knowing it’s not quite the same thing. I search high and low for white-shelled eggs that will allow the dye to take all the better. I take out the dried lovage bought on previous trips to Bucharest because I already know fresh lovage is a rarity here. I steal to the nearby woods during lunch breaks and forage wild garlic (rampions) with equally wild abandon.
The cooking lasts two to three days. I make drob (Easter roulade), Pască (Easter cheesecake), and I dye the eggs. Cozonac (sweet bread with walnut filling, usually reserved for special religious celebrations) is too much of a hassle to make, so I buy the mass-made version imported by the local Eastern European store, even though I know it will taste nothing like the real, home-made deal. Then, on Easter Sunday, I take photos of all my goodies, share them with family and friends – since photos are usually all we get to share on these occasions nowadays.
Each year, it makes me happy to share these foods and some of these traditions with my partner, and I feel proud of all my culinary achievements. I’m also proud that, after decades of having a difficult relationship with food, I have now become rather a good cook (if I do say so myself), and take pleasure in cooking for myself and others. But. There is something else that happens each year when I reach, oh, day three, of cooking elaborate dishes. Blind rage envelops me. I feel like I want to scream and break something. I am exhasuted. I am bored. I begin to resent all time I’ve spent stuck in the kitchen by the pots and pans, and the inordinate amount of time cleaning everything up then takes. (And oh, I do have to clean up constantly; as soon as one dish is done, the kitchen counters need clearing in preparation for the next dish).
Something has become very clear: even as I see cooking as an act of love and self-love, and I enjoy it for that reason, I also hate cooking. I hate cooking several dishes. I hate cooking on a constant basis. I hate cooking taking up my life when I could be reading, writing, going to an art gallery, doing something else (enjoyable!) altogether. Yet it’s not like anyone makes me cook elaborate Easter dishes on a yearly basis. Each time, I plunge into this ordeal of my own volition. Each time, I end up rather hating Easter Sunday – exhausted and painfully annoyed with cooking and cleaning. Still, each year, I persist. Why, I’ve come to ask myself, and I didn’t altogether like the answer I’ve arrived at.
It all comes down to reacreating those blissful moments of childhood – only blissful because I was a child and all I did was enjoy the atmosphere. But I watched and I learned. I watched my mother, my grandmothers, my aunts boiling and frying and kneading and baking for days on end. I watched them do nothing else but cook and clean and worry if there was enough food for everyone and if the house was tidy enough for the guests. And just when I thought that surely all the cooking was over because the fridge was certainly too full to hold as much as an extra stuffed pepper, I watched them start with the cooking all over again: “We need a side for the roast!” or “I think everyone must be tired of eating drob by now, what if I made some borș (sour soup)?”
I’ve come to realise I have internalised all this – the notion that there are certain times of year, at least, when I have to be always on, always cooking, cooking elaborate dishes, cooking too much. Whether or not I enjoy it is irrelevant. Except it isn’t. My love for cooking has limits – if I do it too much, then cooking becomes almost physically painful, it sends me into a rage. The act of (self-)love becomes an obligation and thereby punitive. But I grew up in a patriarchal society where this act of love is by necessity punitive, as women are expected to spend inordinate amounts of time in the kitchen, in the domestic realm. Even now, and knowing what I know, it’s hard to shed these shackles, to make the difference between “doing this because I want to” and “doing this because I’ve grown up being shown I’d have to”.
That tradwife life is not for me. In fact, it’s something I’ve done everything in my power to escape. So from now on, I will do this, too (and I’m writing this down here as a sort of promise to myself): I will give that nostalgia a little break. I will cook *one* elaborate dish per season *if* I feel it will really make me happy. Otherwise, I’ll get takeout pizza from my favourite local pizzeria. I may paint a little nature sketch in watercolours instead of dyeing eggs. I will refuse to labour in the home to the point that I get overtaken by rage.
Happy Easter to those who celebrate – whether due to their faith, nostalgia, or for the love of food – and try to prioritise joy over your sense of duty. What is duty, anyway? Ask yourself: Who or what requires you to spend days on end in the kitchen?
Encyclopaedia Vanitatum 