I think I might have a philosophy about emotional eating.
I find when I’m bored I turn to food. Food is not boring. Food comes in an endless variety. You can just go on Pinterest, and search the word “food” and soon you will find a billion delicious photos of food to drool over.
I come from a foodie background. Both my parents were in the restaurant business, and both were fantastic cooks.
My interest in food goes all the way back to my childhood, to a time when I used to watch my mother make the most delicious German dishes and Greek dishes, from foreign recipes. She used foreign language cookbooks that only she understood, not to mention the foreign measurements, none of us besides her could translate.
She would make sauerbraten, souvlaki,  tzatziki and other delicious main dishes, and she could bake a variety of delicious desserts that would curl your hair and your toes!
After I dropped out of high school, I went to Manpower. They made me take a test. It was a way for them to find out what my career should be. It said the test results were that I should be a cook!
They had me enroll in a cooking program, called Commercial Cooking and Baking.
I never took the class because I left Toronto, Canada in 1981 to get married, and move to United States.
After doing a few stints at babysitting, being a housekeeper, and trying to sell makeup,  I was hired as a cook in a hospital.
I found cooking for others was a far different story than cooking for oneself.
To sum up, it is better to cook for yourself. If you cook for others and their special dietary needs, it becomes repetitive and boring. Especially in a hospital setting; especially in the late 1980s.
I don’t know what hospital food is like these days. Yet, back then, I not only cooked for the patients, I also cooked for the staff.
The mundane American diet could not hold a candle to my exotic foreign mother and her delicious dishes.
I found it was such a disappointment to make the same things over and over again, still, that did not turn me off food.
Food is happiness on a plate.
Food is my premium go-to delight when things get rough. The point is not to allow things to get that rough.
The point is easier said than done. Try to find things that you’re interested in, besides food, such as people, music, art, pets, fashion, travel and other wonderful treats that make life fun.
If possible, try not to give food the starring role all the time.
However I must say, be grateful if you can still smell and taste, and cook!
Food is wonderful. And there’s nothing that beats home-cooking when you have a wonderful chef at the helm.
There are other things that may be wonderful, but I confess food really takes the cake!

Musically yours, Amy Zents