I Refused to Learn to Cook Until I Chose To

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On Cooking, Choice, and Making Food for Myself

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It stopped feeling like a chore the day it became a choice.

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People see how much I cook and usually say something like, “Your partner doesn’t know how blessed he is to be eating this good.” It’s meant to be a compliment — and maybe it is — but it’s also a funny assumption.

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I don’t cook like this for anyone else first. I cook like this because I really, really enjoy eating good food.

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I read recipes like study notes. I watch food shows like coursework. I write things down and test ingredients like a culinary student running experiments. If a method looks interesting, I try it. If a spice combination sounds strange, I still try it. My kitchen is half lab, half playground.

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Ironically, I used to hate cooking.

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Growing up, I disliked everything about it — but now I understand why. Cooking was never presented to me as a life skill. It was presented as a requirement. A qualification. A gender duty.

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Aunties would say things like, “Why don’t you cook? How will you get married if you don’t know how to cook?” And that annoyed me deeply. Cooking wasn’t framed as nourishment or creativity or independence. It was framed as something I needed to learn to earn the title of “wife” someday.

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So I resisted it.

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My quiet protest was simple: I didn’t care to learn. Through school, my meals were survival meals — pancakes, boiled yam and sauce, cereals, quick things I could throw together in minutes. I don’t even remember cooking with meat all through my university years. I just needed food that worked, not food that impressed.

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I only really started cooking about five years ago. And it had nothing to do with marriage — it was about health. I was thinking about going to the gym and knew diet would matter, so I started cooking my own meals. That was it. That was the doorway.

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What started as necessity slowly became curiosity — and then enjoyment.

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I began experimenting. Trying things. Failing things. Tweaking things. If something worked, I’d repeat it later with a twist. If it didn’t, I’d still learn from it. Even now, there are a few things that are very true about how I cook:

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- I cannot follow a recipe exactly. I will adjust something. Add something. Remove something. Put my own punch in it. Sometimes it works beautifully. Sometimes it absolutely does not — but it’s always mine.

- I still call my mum or my siblings to ask how to make certain dishes. No shame at all. They always answer, and I always ask.

- And my food never tastes the same twice. Ever. Today’s jollof rice will not taste like last week’s jollof rice. I’ve accepted that my kitchen has moods.

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These days, I understand cooking differently. It’s not a gender role — it’s a life skill. A survival skill. A pleasure skill. And one thing I know for sure is that my  children — all of them — will learn to cook well, regardless of gender. Not because they must, but because they should be able to feed and please themselves.

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That’s actually one of my favorite parts of cooking now — I get to make something delicious just for me. Carefully. Slowly. Exactly how I like it. Sometimes I wonder if professional chefs miss that — the quiet luxury of cooking without pressure, without tickets, without clients — just appetite and imagination.

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I’m not afraid to try new things either. Dave laughs because whenever I look at a meal and say, “This is simple,” he already knows what’s coming next: I’m about to make my own version of it whether it needs remixing or not.

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I still have a long way to go. Understanding spices properly. Layering herbs. Getting that deep umami balance right. But there’s no pressure — I have time. Cooking is one of the few places where I allow myself to be imperfect and experimental. I might mutter “this could be better” under my breath, but I’ll still plate it beautifully and enjoy it fully.

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One of these days I’ll spend an entire afternoon making fresh pasta from scratch — just because I can. That feels very on-brand for me as a creative person: doing detailed things simply for the joy of doing them.

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If I ever became very wealthy, I suspect my life would look like this: cooking elaborate meals, reading widely, writing often, and eating well. My kitchen would probably take more space, money, and planning than any other part of the house.

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Lately, I’ve also developed a mild obsession with crockery and utensils. Beautiful plates make me irrationally happy. I’ve walked into more than one restaurant and genuinely wondered whether anyone would notice if a spoon went missing. I love good cutlery. I love gorgeous plating. I love the ceremony of presentation almost as much as the food itself.

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Cooking is a gift to myself - it's my way of saying "Cynthia, your mouth deserve to experience life to it's fullest".

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I didn’t fall in love with cooking when it was introduced to me as duty. I fell in love with it when it became choice — when it became creative, nourishing, and personal.

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Turns out you can be a dope woman and love cooking — just not for the reasons people expect.

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