Ron damaged me in a lot of ways.
He didn't want me to be pretty and felt very threatened when I got a compliment.
He didn't want me to be a good cook. I am, but he didn't ever compliment me. He was very critical. In late 2002, in desperation, I began serving dinner specials at our deli. It was not a proper food service setup, I had a hot plate, some immersion warmers, and a couple of microwaves. That was it.
I turned out 5 dinner specials: taco casserole, ham & bean soup (cooked on the hot plate from scratch) {those 2 utilized leftovers we could not sell} chicken soup (also from scratch, made with chicken leg quarters), spaghetti (I doctored a #10 can of sauce and added cooked and seasoned ground beef), and rotisserie chicken leg quarters with homemade gravy and 2 sides.
People came in hours in advance to buy my food. They fought over it at the counter if I only had a few plates left. We actually made a profit. The food was cheap, he was already paying me the labor.
And then he got run over. We closed the deli and focused on the vending machines. Ron was bitterly critical of everything I made unless it was a TV dinner. It was easier to buy processed food or go out to dinner. I stopped cooking.
As he declined he forgot a lot of the head games he had played and asked me to cook, and raved about what I made. His two favorite dishes were canned corn drained and mixed with baked beans. I would top it with bacon bits. He loved that. His other favorite dish was split peas with rice. I would add extra water when the peas were almost done and then add rice, cover it, and cook the rice in the bean juice. He loved that. I still do that when I make lentils.
After he died I didn't cook for a long time, not seriously. I was cooking to survive not to enjoy my food. That only started after - you guessed it! The assault this June. I realized I liked cooking and it was fine and OK to enjoy my food.
But oh, the things Ron would say about my food. Hateful.
Hopefully I'll forget all that in time.
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