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Nausea and eating

I cook for four and I cannot stand the smell of my own kitchen

Started 14 January 2026 · 8 replies · 375 hearts · read 4.2k times

BobbieRochdale, UK · 14 January 2026
6 months ago

Rochdale. Three sons, one kitchen, endless negotiation, and the negotiation has got a new item on the agenda.

Since about November the cooking has been the hardest part of this for me, and it is nothing to do with wanting to eat it. It is the smell. Frying anything is the worst — onions, bacon, anything in a pan with fat in it — and by the time I have got a proper tea on the table for three teenage boys I am standing at the back door with my head out in the cold and I have no interest in sitting down with them.

Which is the bit that has upset me, if I am honest. We eat together. That is the one thing this family has kept through a divorce, two house moves and my eldest’s GCSE year. And for the last two months I have been plating theirs up and then finding a reason to be doing something else.

My middle one asked me on Sunday if I was all right, in that carefully casual way they do it, and I said I was fine, and then I lay awake thinking about what he has actually been watching for eight weeks.

So the practical question is about smells and cooking. But the real question is what I say to a fifteen-year-old who has noticed his mother has stopped eating with him.

125

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#1

Bobbie, I hold parents and I am going to take your two questions in the other order, because the second one is the one keeping you awake.

What fifteen-year-olds mostly need is an accurate sentence they can stop worrying about. Not a full explanation and not a cheerful denial — the denial is what makes them keep watching. Something like: you are right, I have not been eating with you, it is because the smell of cooking is turning my stomach at the minute and it is a side effect of some medicine I am on, and I am talking to the doctor about it. Then a specific thing that fixes the visible part: I am going to sit down with you all with a cup of tea and eat mine later.

He is not worried about your appetite. He is worried because something changed and nobody named it. Naming it is most of the fix.

On the food itself — children notice the rules adults are following far more than what adults say. The guide on this is worth an evening at some point.

56me too 13

TobySwindon, UK
#2

Cooking for four when I want none of it, so this is my whole life. Things that have genuinely reduced the smell problem in my kitchen:

The oven instead of the hob, always. Nothing shallow-fried. A window open before I start rather than after it has got bad. And, the big one — a cheap extractor hood that actually works, which I resented paying for and which changed my winter.

I also stopped tasting as I cook. Learned to trust the recipe. Sounds small. It was about half the problem.

43me too 9

CoralieMarseille, FR
#3

Marseille. Loud family, small appetite, big love. I sit at the table with them and eat almost nothing and nobody minds at all, because I told them, and now my mother-in-law makes a point of putting a plate in front of me with three things on it and saying nothing about how much of it goes back.

Sitting there matters more than eating. That is what I would say to your boy.

49me too 8

BertrandToulouse, FR
#4

Toulouse. Rugby, cassoulet, compromise. The compromise in my house is that I cook at the weekend when I feel better and we eat it in the week, so the days I am worst are the days I only have to reheat something in the oven, which barely smells at all.

Batch cooking as a smell strategy rather than a time strategy. I have not seen anybody put it that way but that is what it is.

38me too 6

NualaArmagh, NI
#5

Two teenagers, no privacy, Armagh. Mine noticed within a fortnight and asked outright, and I gave them a version of the truth and it was completely fine, and the relief on my daughter’s face told me she had been imagining something far worse.

They always imagine something worse. Whatever you say will be less frightening than eight weeks of a mother being vague.

52me too 12

BassCoventry, UK
#6

Musician, Coventry. Different angle: I could not eat before a gig for months because of the same smell thing in a green room, and what fixed it for me was cold food I had brought with me and could eat away from where the cooking was.

Might not help with a family tea. Does help if the problem is proximity rather than food.

26me too 4

TaviaPalermo, IT
#7

Palermo, Sicilian family, very loud and very loving. I want to say something about the guilt in your third paragraph, because it is doing more damage than the onions.

You have kept a family eating together through a divorce and two house moves. Eight weeks of plating up and standing at the door does not undo that. The table is still there. You built it.

54me too 10

BobbieRochdale, UK
#8

Told him Tuesday, more or less in Wren’s words. He said oh, right, and asked if it was serious, and I said no and explained a bit, and then he asked whether he could have the chippy on Friday since I was not fussed about cooking. Fifteen.

Oven only, window first, no tasting as I go. And I sat at the table on Wednesday with a mug of tea and ate mine at nine o’clock and nobody thought anything of it at all.

57me too 6