Some Long Island senior women have quit cooking

For years, Anita Sokol put dinner on the table every night for her husband and two children. “I had a ‘Good Housekeeping’ cookbook and I was determined to try everything,” she said. “I made a pretty good lasagna, I made great apple pie and brownies, I even got into Indian food.”

When her marriage broke up in 1989, so did Sokol’s relationship with the kitchen. “I was done with cooking,” said Sokol, 80, of East Northport. “I had done so much.”

She is not alone. For some older Long Island women, cooking is an obligation they are ready to leave behind. Some are burned out by the daily routine; others now live alone or say they never liked cooking in the first place. Instead they find themselves turning to takeout, prepared meals or letting their husbands take over kitchen duties.

Leah Ruppanner, a sociology professor at the University of Melbourne who has written extensively about the strain of the unpaid work that falls on many women, describes cooking as one of the “mental loads” they consistently face. A lot goes into making the decision to stop cooking, Ruppanner explained in an email, from the requirements of planning meals to carrying on traditions and making sure the family sits down to share a meal. Putting it simply, she says, “Some women may opt out because it all just feels like too much.”

“Cooking was the love language for many women,” said Carol Razza, a psychotherapist who grew up in Uniondale. “Then suddenly the husband dies, the children are out of the house, it’s not the same anymore,” said Razza, 79, who now lives in Wellington, Florida. “They’re not experiencing the same joy. It’s a demand physically,” she said, “standing at the counter, chopping, cleaning up.” Beyond that, “eating habits change,” she said. “We don’t eat as much when we get older.”

Stefanie Jacobs enjoyed cooking when she was younger. Never married, she liked throwing dinner parties for colleagues when she was a case worker for the Nassau County Department of Social Services. And she enjoyed baking because, she said, she liked following the rules. But mostly, she felt cooking was a chore. Twenty years ago, she found a solution. “I was heavy, I needed to lose weight,” said Jacobs, 80, of Uniondale. She discovered Nutrisystem, “which was not that delicious, but it did the job. You could put something in the microwave for two minutes and have dinner,” she said. “I didn’t have to cook, I didn’t have to think about shopping or making meal plans. I just took something out of the freezer.”

Jacobs recalls trying to do some cooking at one point. “I ordered a cookbook,” she said, “but it wanted me to make shopping list and weekly plans. … I returned it and it was a relief.” A change in format made her give up Nutrisystem— “they want you to put things in a frying pan,” she said. “Then I had a frying pan I have to wash.” Now she relies on frozen meals like Healthy Choice and rotisserie chickens from Costco or BJs. “One chicken can give you eight meals,” she said.

Early in her marriage, retired teacher Alice Sprintzen cooked because “we were poor. If we went out,” she said, “it was probably to McDonald’s or Friendly’s.” 

Now Sprintzen, 79, of Syosset, devotes her time to artwork and eats out with her husband most nights, favoring casual restaurants like On Parade Diner in Woodbury and Toast in Huntington. Cooking just takes too much time, she said. “You have to go shopping, then you have to make the stuff, then you have to clean up. I always think when I’m cooking, I could be making a sculpture.”

She’ll occasionally make a salad or some eggs, and every so often a dish for a potluck. “The only time I use the oven is for Thanksgiving,” she said, noting that she makes a “good turkey and everyone else brings something.” 

Raised by a single mom, Linda Hughes, of Copiague, had a mother who didn’t cook. “I never cooked much because my mother never taught me,” she said. The only thing she’s really good at, said Hughes, is mashed potatoes, a recipe she learned from her Irish grandmother. “There’s a secret,” she said (and, no, she’s not giving it away).

But her lack of cooking skills didn’t matter much because she was married to a New York City fireman and he loved to cook. “It was part of the job,” she said. Hughes, 71, said she used to make simple meals for her three children  — grilled cheese, her own take on Egg McMuffins. But when her husband came home, “he made outrageous meals. He cooked, I shopped and cleaned up,” she said.

Now divorced, with her children grown, and retired from her job as a geriatric sociologist, Hughes rarely cooks — she was anticipating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner the evening she spoke with Newsday. During the winter she’ll make chili or chicken soup in her Crockpot, and she goes out with friends a couple times a month, which always results in leftovers.

Putting on her sociologist hat for the moment, Hughes said she believes many women feel obligated to cook for their families to express their love. In her opinion, she said, “I don’t really think most women like to cook.”

Lisa Strauss Vilinsky would agree with that. When her two kids were growing up, the Centereach resident, 72, said she and her husband shared kitchen duties. “Whoever got home first started dinner,” said Vilinsky, who retired six years ago from her teaching assistant job in the Middle Country school district. Her husband was out of the house from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., so it often fell to her. She cooked basics, “nothing too exciting,” for the family, and looked on it as an obligation. “Somebody had to do it, but cooking was never my passion,” she said, even though “my mother was a fabulous cook. She never really understood why her two girls didn’t share that love.”

In recent years, a job change resulted in her husband getting home earlier. “And he absolutely loves to cook,” said Vilinsky, noting that he’s been cooking since he was a teenager and his mother went back to work. “He’s really into it,” she said, adding that she tells him they’re a good team because “you love to cook and I love to eat.” They go out with friends regularly, but if he’s not cooking, she doesn’t cook for herself, settling for eggs or a tuna sandwich.

In the early days after the breakup of her marriage, Anita Sokol said she was challenged financially and cooked very simply, mostly because she couldn’t afford to eat out. When she was 50, Sokol said she developed a career for herself, creating glow-in-the-dark necklaces for rock concerts. “I became rather successful,” she said, adding that she spent six years on the road with the rock band Kiss.

She also worked selling medical services for Walgreens before retiring two years ago. And there’s a new man in her life, a man who doesn’t like takeout or delivery because, she said, “he likes his food really hot.” So they eat out every night. Among their favorites, BiVio in Huntington, Yokohama and Premier Diner in Commack, and Mezza Luna in Hauppauge.

Sokol thinks back to the days when people looked forward to her food. “People thought I was a wonderful cook,” she said. “They’d always ask what I was making.” But eventually, she said, “it became more of an obligation. … I was just tired of cooking, there was no joy in it anymore.”