Living to Eat (and Finally Learning to Cook with ADHD)

They say some people eat to live, and others live to eat. As a second-generation Italian-American girl from Queens, I have always, proudly, lived to eat. Food is how we say "I love you" without actually saying it. It’s Sunday sauce simmering for hours, it’s too much bread on the table, it’s arguing about whose meatballs are better.  

“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” has, quite frankly, never once resonated with me. Carbs are a personality trait where I’m from.

But here’s the part that might surprise you: for most of my adult life, I didn’t love to cook. I loved eating, I loved restaurants, I loved being cooked for, but the actual act of planning, prepping, and executing dinner on a random Wednesday felt… exhausting.

Part of it is my ADHD. If you’ve ever tried to follow an online recipe while your brain is pinging in twelve different directions, you know. I do not need a five-paragraph origin story about your grandmother’s garden before you tell me the oven temperature, because by the time I scroll to the ingredients, I’ve checked my email, ordered socks, and forgotten why I opened the page in the first place.

And then, honestly, ChatGPT changed the game.

Now I type in what’s in my fridge ("salmon, cherry tomatoes, half a lemon, feta”), and I get a straightforward, no-frills recipe in seconds. No life story, no ads, just clarity, which removes the friction and means I actually cook.

And here’s what I didn’t expect: I love what happens while I’m cooking. Not the chaotic, multitasking version, but the steadier one: audiobook in my ears (hi, Wild Reverence), hands moving, knife hitting the cutting board in a rhythm that somehow settles my nervous system. I don’t even particularly love chopping, but I love how it quiets my brain while I’m doing something useful, something that ends with everyone gathered around the table.

For me, this isn’t about being a trad wife or optimizing protein. It’s about reconnecting to something that’s always been part of my identity — food as joy, food as love — in a way that works with my brain instead of against it. And realizing that maybe in your late 30s, you just become the nonna whether you planned to or not.