I Faked Loving My Neighbor’s Cooking for Years, but I Never Expected to Miss It.

​ Four years ago my neighbor (70s, very sweet) started bringing me food every Sunday because “you’re too skinny to live alone.” Her cooking was… uh… aggressively experimental. Paper-dry meat, mysterious spice combos, soups that tasted like wet socks. One night her husband pulled me aside outside and said: “Thank you for pretending to like her food. She lost her sense of purpose after retirement. Cooking keeps her alive.” So I doubled down. I hyped every dish like it was Michelin-level. She would beam every time. It became this whole ritual, she’d hand me a plastic container, I’d compliment her seasoning, she’d blush and wave me off. Fast forward to last month. Her husband had a mild stroke. They changed his diet, and she’s too overwhelmed to cook. The meals stopped. And I realized something: I actually miss them. Not the food, hell no, but the weird warmth of it. It felt like someone was caring about me in their own clumsy way. I want to check in on her, but I feel like if I ask for food again it’ll come off insulting, and if I don’t, I’ll seem ungrateful. So I’ve been silently grieving the world’s worst lasagna.