Secure Meals — THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM
The English muffin has to be toasted evenly.
Not too dark on the edges, not pale in the center.
I clean the toaster before I use it. Every time.
The jelly is homemade. Smooth. No seeds.
These foods are not boring to me.
They are the reason I can sit at a table at all.
People think this is about preference.
It isn’t.
I grew up in a Midwestern household where everything was a casserole.
Noodles, meat, something canned, something melted.
Even the Jell-O showed up in a circular glass dish on the Fourth of July,
suspended with fruit and something that shouldn’t have been there.
It wasn’t just that I was picky, though that was true.
It was that when I was already in sensory overload, certain foods weren’t safe.
And when everything was mixed together,
there was no way to separate it.
I would rather not eat at all.
It wasn’t dramatic when it happened. It wasn’t a protest.
It was quieter than that.
A closing.
My body deciding that not eating was safer than eating the wrong thing. Safer than trying something new.
Hunger didn’t feel like hunger anymore. It felt like static.
Something to wait out.
Something preferable to the overwhelm of a plate I couldn’t navigate.
My parents eventually stopped cooking for me.
I was too difficult.
They were too busy with their own careers.
By sixteen, I had dropped below eighty-five pounds.
Soon after, I moved out.
It wasn’t official, but it meant something had shifted.
I was making my own choices.
And, for the first time, being supported in how to eat for myself.
What foods were safe.
I made a list.
Granny Smith apples, safe.
Golden wheat toast with clear strawberry jelly, only organic, safe.
Buttered noodles with a smidge of parsley and lots of salt, safe.
I knew these things.
But the people I was living with introduced me to more.
Kale. Carrots. Broccolini, just baby broccoli, but it felt like something new.
They never forced me to eat anything.
They just cooked in front of me.
I watched.
Every ingredient. Every step.
The more I knew, the safer I felt.
I could map the meal before I had to navigate it.
Nothing appeared without context.
I could anticipate what was coming next.
There were no hidden textures, no unexpected flavors buried under something suspicious.
I didn’t have to brace myself between bites.
I could stay.
And staying meant I could eat.
Most people have a version of this, even if they don’t name it that way.
The meal they order when they’re too tired to decide.
The food they eat when they’re sick.
The thing that doesn’t ask anything of them.
For some of us, that instinct becomes a system.
More structured. Less flexible. Harder to ignore.
But it isn’t foreign.
It’s the same need, just louder.
For me, cooking is not a performance or a creative outlet.
It is a way back into my body.
It is how I make food possible.
It is how I make eating possible.
Image by Frank Oschatz from Pixabay
