The word 'delicious' and my self-esteem

My name is Tomo Takehara, and I work as a nursery school cook while also working as a side-hustle writer. You can call me 'Taketomo'.
I changed my writer name a little bit.

You cook at work, you cook at home every day—what's so fun about that? Isn't it exhausting?

I get asked that sometimes.

As I'm steadily approaching my late thirties, it's a fact that when I have consecutive work days, my legs and lower back start to ache, my body feels stiff, and I often wake up in the morning with back pain.

The nursery school where I work is for 0, 1, and 2-year-olds, so I have to chop ingredients into small pieces, and there's baby food to prepare, too. The rooms get so hot that we even turn on the air conditioning in the middle of winter, and there are many times when I'm rushing around, thinking, 'I have to make it in time!'

'All done! Good work today.'

Every day is a repetition of things like that, but when the children's plates are empty and sparkling clean, or when they tell me, 'That was delicious!', I am truly happy.

It also makes me really happy when the teachers come in for their break, eat the school lunch, and say, 'Teacher, that was delicious! Thank you!'

It's truly wonderful that they share those feelings with me, and it made me realize that I need to make sure I express my gratitude to them as well.

I have low self-esteem and I'm a bit of a cynic. Even when a teacher told me it was 'delicious,' I often thought to myself, 'They're just being polite, aren't they?'

Wow, that's a nasty way to think, being a cynic. I want to tell myself, 'Just be honest!'

But that's also because I lack confidence in the taste of my own cooking. After all, I have a past where I wasn't good at cooking.

But lately, I feel like I've become able to accept it honestly. That's because of these words from one of the teachers.

'Teacher, your food has such a gentle flavor, it really warms the soul. It's always delicious!'

Yesterday, we had bibimbap bowls for lunch, and she said she even took a picture of the lunch on her tray and sent it to her friends on LINE to brag about it.

I almost cried. I was so happy to hear the word 'delicious.' It was a moment where my self-esteem really went up, thinking, 'If she's willing to go that far, maybe I can have some confidence!'

Today, I decided to carefully prepare a school lunch that everyone will call 'delicious.'