I've been thinking about how social media ruined cooking. Or maybe not ruined. Maybe just changed the way we feel while we're doing it. Because I still cook almost every night, and I still love it most of the time. But there's this new voice in my head now, and it didn't used to be there.
The Voice That Watches
You know the one. You're standing at the stove, scrambling eggs because it's been a long day and eggs are what you have. The eggs are fine. They're good, even. Soft, with a little cheese melting through. Your daughter is babbling in her high chair, reaching for a piece of toast. It's a perfectly good moment.
But the voice goes: this isn't interesting enough. Nobody would photograph this. This doesn't count.
That voice didn't exist fifteen years ago. My mom never once thought about whether her Wednesday night stir-fry was "content." She just made it, we ate it, and the evening moved on. There was no audience. The meal existed only for the people at the table.
Performance vs. Presence
I don't think social media invented the idea of cooking as performance. Dinner parties have always been a little theatrical. But there's a difference between wanting to impress eight people you invited into your home and wanting to impress thousands of strangers who will scroll past in half a second.
The scale changed something. When the potential audience is infinite, the bar feels infinite too. Suddenly your Dutch oven braise needs to be cascading off a rustic wooden spoon, backlit by golden hour, garnished with something you grew yourself. The bar isn't "did my family eat well tonight." The bar is "would this stop someone's thumb."
That's an insane standard to hold yourself to while also working full time, keeping a toddler alive, and trying to stay under budget on groceries.
What I'm Trying to Unlearn
Here's what I keep coming back to. The best meals I've cooked this spring, the ones where I felt the most present and the most calm, were the ones I never even considered documenting. Eggs and toast with the windows open. A bowl of rice with whatever was left in the fridge. My daughter eating strawberries one by one, juice running down her chin, completely unbothered by whether the lighting was good.
She doesn't know that meals are supposed to look a certain way. She just knows if she's hungry, and if the person feeding her seems happy or stressed. That's it. That's her whole metric.
I want to cook more like she eats. Present. Unself-conscious. Not performing for anyone who isn't at the table.
The Part I Can't Resolve
The irony isn't lost on me. I write a food blog. I am, in some small way, part of the thing I'm describing. I think about that a lot.
Maybe the difference is intent. Maybe it's whether you're sharing something because it connected you to your life, or because you need your life to be witnessed to feel real. I don't always know which one I'm doing. I suspect most of us don't.
The light is different these evenings. Longer, softer, coming through the kitchen window at an angle that makes even a messy counter look warm. I keep noticing it. I keep not taking a photo.
I'm not sure if that's progress or just stubbornness. But it feels like something.