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In theory, the holidays should be a time of joyfully convening around sumptuous homemade meals and giving thanks for life’s great bounty. In actual practice, though, I know that I am far from the only one of my friends who’s burst into tears after a long-awaited Thanksgiving recipe came out inedible, or who picked a totally unnecessary fight with a partner after the accidental dropping of a carefully iced cake.
Even in non-holiday months, though, depression, anxiety, and a host of other mental illnesses are uniquely skilled at depriving us of the executive functioning necessary to feed ourselves in ways that make us feel, well, good. Enter Philadelphia Inquirer deupty food editor Margaret Eby’s new book You Gotta Eat: Real-Life Strategies for Feeding Yourself When Cooking Feels Impossible, an amalgamation of recipes, tips, tactics, kitchen hacks, and general pieces of wisdom for all the self-described kitchen flops out there.
Vogue recently spoke to Eby about the parts of food media that she finds antithetical to taking genuine joy in cooking; borrowing inspiration from stoner cuisine; and preparing for first-time parenthood.
Vogue: How did the idea for this book come about?
Margaret Eby: I am a person who has depression and anxiety and normally takes a lot of joy in cooking. I do a lot of weird, experimental home-cooking projects, like chili crisp and pretzel croquembouche and other bizarre things. But I went through, like, a couple-month period where not only could I not possibly fathom making anything like that, I was like, I don’t even know how to eat food. My loving partner would sit next to me on the couch and be like, “You have to eat a banana.” Thanks to therapy and medication and the wonderful people in my life, I got through it, but I was chatting with my editor Jess at Quirk, who also happens to just be a pal of mine, about: What if a cookbook…for depressed people? It was one of those jokes that’s like, “Ha-ha, unless…?” It sort of grew from there.
And because Quirk doesn’t really do traditional, big, glossy cookbooks, it grew into a book for anyone who is having a really hard time and wants to cook, or has some motivation in their life for cooking, but really cannot figure it out. It’s about using the resources that you have on hand, meaning not just what you have in your house and in your pantry, but also, like, your emotional and your energy resources, because there are a million cookbooks out there with easy and simple recipes, right? That’s not unique. But the big question I always had was, easy for who? Simple for who? Like, does this factor in access to fresh ingredients? Does this factor in how much time you have to use to clean up? I developed these weird mental blocks around certain tasks. In the kitchen, I’ll just be like, I cannot take out this pan and wash it. I do not have it in my heart to do it. The book came out of that, and I think, with the excellent guidance of the team at Quirk, it sort of became not just a cookbook, but, I’m hoping, a pep-talk and a permission slip, if you need it, to just do what you need to do to get by. If you have capacity to find a little joy or creativity in it, that rules and is amazing. And if you don’t, here’s a cool way to make a frozen dinner taste better.
I love that so much. And sorry if you’re hearing nursery music; I’m hanging out with my friends’ 10-month-old.
That’s so funny, because I actually thought a lot about new parents while I was making this book, because I was like, that’s a time when you definitely don’t have time for food. Actually, spoiler, I’m pregnant right now…
Oh my God, congratulations!
I’m very excited, and I’m also very aware that I will not have any time or energy to cook soon.
Why do you think cooking and kitchen stuff specifically can be so difficult for people having any and all kinds of rough times?
I think there’s just an enormous amount of pressure coming from every direction when it comes to food. When you’re in the kitchen, you’re not just navigating I am cooking dinner, you’re also bringing in all these things like gender assumptions, class assumptions…maybe you’re someone who has bought into the diet-industrial complex their whole life, and food is never simple. I think people often think of the mantra, “It’s just food,” but it’s like, no, of course not. There are labor concerns. There are, like, the “eat clean” bros. There’s concern about the rapidly warming globe and how what we’re eating is contributing to it, and all that stuff can be really, really paralyzing.
I also think it’s in combination with messages from food media—of which I am very much a part—that are primarily driven by SEO concerns about, like, the best way to do things, right? There’s a lot of worry about, “This is the best way to cook an egg,” or make a turkey, or, “This is the best stuffing recipe.” We know why people frame things like that, but I think it can often feel really paralyzing when you’re like, well, I don’t have this spice. Should I just not do this? That’s something I’ve certainly internalized. And the truth is, it’s one of these messages that we get from a very Eurocentric, white supremacist, very patriarchal system. Like, there’s one way of doing it, and it’s the way that French chefs have been doing it.
But if you back away from it, you’re like, okay, so someone in 18th-century France knows how to cook vegetables, but someone in 20th-century India doesn’t? It doesn’t make any sense at all. But I do think all those structures and assumptions, especially if you’re not feeling like your best self, can just feel suffocating. And then you’re like, “I give up. Chicken nuggets.”
I love how your book reminds us that there’s actually no wrong way to feed ourselves.
If you even look at the way that we code those meals, like “struggle meals” or “girl dinner,” where it’s like, man, if you ate that same thing at a party, you would just call it a dinner and be good with it! You wouldn’t be like, “Oh no, I ate pigs in a blanket and crudités.” But for some reason, when we’re at home, you are capital-B Bad for doing this. But not every meal has to be this beautifully assembled thing. You have so many of them a day, and I think all of us who are interested in food contain multitudes. Some days I’m making pretzel croquembouche, and some days it’s chicken fingers.
Is there any recipe or shortcut or hack in the book that you’re particularly pleased with?
I’m always really proud of myself when I realize that an ingredient is a shortcut. For the mug cake, I was like, what if, instead of access to cream and ice cream and sugar, you already have ice cream, and it just does whatever you want? Mostly, I just want people to realize that they can be as weird as they want with their food. No one can stop them. Often, my personal way of scrabbling out of the bad time and into finding some kind of spark of joy in the kitchen is when I start getting weird with stuff. Like: I only have these ingredients on hand…what if it was a sandwich? Stoners get a really bad rap for this, but I feel like they are at the cutting-edge of this philosophy.
Are there any reactions to the book that have surprised you thus far?
I’ve been really touched by how many dietitians and therapists have been into this book, which is really meaningful to me. At my book party, someone had me sign a copy of my book to their therapist about their renourishment plan, and I got a little weepy about it, because, you know, I just hope it helps even a little bit in these times. I’m also a fat person who lives in a bigger body, and I think a lot of times you get so much intense, terrible messaging about food and eating. It has been really lovely to me to see people in fat-positive spaces like the book, which I was hoping for, but not expecting necessarily.
