Selena Gomez Says Cooking with Boyfriend Benny Blanco 'Really Grounds' Her: 'It's OK to Just Be Simple'

Selena Gomez says that cooking with Benny Blanco is one of their favorite ways to spend time together.

On Wednesday, Sept. 4, Gomez, 32, opened up about her relationship with the music producer, 36, while hosting a virtual event with Instagram for her brand Rare Beauty.

During a question and answer session, the musician spoke candidly about the advice that she might give her younger self.

"Don't be so hard on myself," Gomez told the audience. "I was very hard on myself. If the teacher scolded me for talking too much I'd go home and think about it all day. If I had a crush on a boy and he asked a girl out in front of me, I'd be a wreck forever."

"I was too hard on myself," she added. "I didn't think I was enough or sometimes I didn't think I fit in and ultimately you're exactly who you are made to be."

Gomez was asked how she's learned to combat those feelings over the years.

"This sounds maybe a little silly but just actually taking a step away and just look around, you know?" she said. "Like, for example at home I like to just go and sit outside and put my feet in the grass and sit there and maybe listen to some music and I just try to find things that really ground me."

"I love fresh foods and stuff. I'm starting to get into that kind of because of my boyfriend," she said of Blanco. "Just being in the garden and picking food that I'm going to be able to cook with. It sounds so silly and minuscule but the older you get the more that you realize that it's OK to just be simple and have simplicity."

The Disney alum also shared one of the couple's favorite items to cook together — and opened up about how they share their creations with friends and family.

"One of the things I'm doing, for example, is we're making a bunch of tamales, which is one of my favorites, and we're going to be giving them to a bunch of random friends," Gomez said. "We're just gonna randomly do that one day and that's a long process but it's so fun. We're gonna listen to music and have a drink and make tamales and go give it to our friends."

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Food has played an important role in the pair's relationship from the beginning. Back in March, Blanco — who is also the author of Open Wide: A Cookbook for Friends — revealed Gomez's favorite dishes that he often cooks for her.

“She's a huge steak fan. So anything that has steak in it. Or, yesterday I just brought her, it's not in my book, but I brought her, she loves soup,” Blanco revealed at the time. “So she was shooting a show yesterday so I made a little soup and I brought it over to her.” 

Also in March, Gomez raved about her boyfriend's kitchen, showing off his custom designs and personal touches in an Instagram video.

"One of my fav places to be is in.. his kitchen," Gomez captioned the video, which showed countertops full of vegetables, meat and other foods in a pan covered with aluminum foil.

The Only Murders in the Building star and pop producer first publicly confirmed their relationship in December 2023, but Gomez wrote on social media at the time that the couple had already been together for six months before the official reveal.