The First Thing I Ever Cooked for Myself
Looking through my kitchen window, you'd have seen an eighteen year old, newly out, newly alone, and newly determined not to eat another packet of instant noodles. The kitchen was unfamiliar, someone else’s pans, someone else’s fridge, but I had a bag of potatoes, a packet of Mince, gravy granules and an Onion, along with a quiet kind of hunger that wasn’t just about food.
I didn’t know what I was making. I rinsed the potatoes like they’d been through something, and back then dirty potatoes were cheaper, I peeled them with a blunt knife and fried everything in oil that smelled faintly of someone else’s dinners. I added Paprika because it felt like a decision. I added salt because I wanted to taste something and I pushed around the pan with wooden spatula my mother gave me, which I still have and use every day- a reminder of her love.
It wasn’t a good dinner. But it was mine.
That meal didn’t feed me in the traditional sense. It fed me in the way a first poem does, or a first protest. It said: you can make something out of what you have. It said: you’re allowed to season your own life.
Since then, I’ve cooked thousands of meals. Some have been joyful, some have been grief-soaked, some have been shared with chosen family who bring their own spices to the table. But I keep coming back to that first pan of mince and potatoes. Because it wasn’t just food, it was a beginning.
This blog is for anyone who’s ever cooked with what they had. For anyone who’s ever stirred a pot and whispered, I’m still here. For anyone who believes that food can be a form of resistance, of reclamation, of radical care.
Welcome to my kitchen. Let’s cook something that matters.
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