It’s just that I prefer avoiding cooking to the actual cooking sometimes

Full disclosure: This article is about kitchen avoidance.

No, I don’t avoid my kitchen because I don’t like it. It’s a small, typical L-shaped Israeli kitchen, and when we moved to Beit Shemesh, I chose the cabinet color myself. I like the marbled gray cabinets; I just feel that sometimes, the kitchen is a place latent with unspoken passive-aggressive demands. Particularly on Erev Shabbos.

Yes, Rebbetzin-in-my-head, I am grateful that I have a kitchen, and an indeterminate amount of people with bottomless stomachs to cook uncountable amounts of meals for (indeterminate: Guests haven’t confirmed whether they’re coming or not; uncountable: Neighbor and sister-in-law both due to give birth soon, may have their kids over).

It’s not that I don’t like cooking. It’s just that I prefer avoiding cooking to the actual cooking sometimes. Like now.

The easy way out of this guilt-inducing dilemma is to pretend I’m cooking by pulling out my cookbooks and reading them. I love reading cookbooks. Take this:

“Bouillabaisse: A delicious soup for a special occasion. Purists maintain that a true bouillabaisse cannot be made anywhere but the Mediterranean.”