Introduction
I started cooking all the meals in my household in 2025, after years of slowly crawling out of the hole that is living with ARFID. one of the reasons my maladaptive eating habits got so bad in college was that I didn't know how to make food that tasted good and I didn't have the skills to learn on my own. I've always been able to bake cookies and things from a mix that you can buy in the store, but following a more complicated recipe always took ten times longer than it should've as I re-read each step a million times before I could feel confident continuing. things that weren't baked goods were always the most daunting, because every recipe I found assumed that I had a basic understanding of most things they were talking about and I literally did not understand what amount of salt is necessary to make something taste like anything—yes, it was that bad.
after moving in with my girlfriend, she took over the cooking and I stepped in to help every so often. now that good food was guaranteed, I felt comfortable trying new baked goods as my fun food for the week. this gave me some new skills in following recipes that I found online. when my girlfriend started having late shifts, I started managing a little more of the cooking, preparing ingredients for more complicates stuff as she headed home or just cooking it by myself if it was something simple like pasta. one day, I ended up continuing a more complicated recipe on my own, and then I had dinner finished by the time she got home. since then, I have been the one to cook dinner most days, even now that she has a better job that doesn't give her shit hours.
recovery from ARFID is a long, long journey when you're doing it on your own rather than with a nutritionist, but I got sick of having multiple hours of my week being dedicated to healthcare and being in control of my own recovery keeps me comfortable. I figure out how to enjoy new things by introducing a recipe that combines familiar ingredients I like with unfamiliar ingredients, and then I just keep branching from there. along with recipes, this cookbook has a collection of notes about what I've learned from cooking, both skills and new things I like. cooking is a creative outlet, and once you get past the hurdle of understanding the basics, it can be really fun. also, there's nothing sexier than a guy that knows how to cook. like, it's art that you can eat. that's fuckin hot.