Food

Did you ever notice how much our lives revolve around food? We eat daily, but I’m not talking about our routine diets. I’m talking about comfort food. Food that sparks the memories of its association. The foods you look forward to based on the seasonal changes and holiday get togethers. I’m talking about the foods that take hours of preparation, where the memories of making them are just as, if not more important than eating.

Ham, for instance, always makes me think of Easter. Crepes reminisce Christmas breakfast. Candied popcorn makes me savor New Years Eve. Blacked Eyed Peas New Year's Day. Grandma's fruit Salad or mom’s yeast rolls celebrate Thanksgiving. Sugar cookies bring up every detail of my paternal grandmother’s kitchen. Breakfast burritos remind me of summer camping trips.  Traditions so deep rooted in my memory that I can actually taste these foods with the very thought.

Makes me wonder what kind of traditions, what kind of memories I’m leaving in the minds of my own children. I’m so fond of my childhood that raising them in equal happiness is my greatest goal and proves equally intimidating. And so I start in the kitchen with each. I start by encouraging them to partake in the messiness of creating the tastiness of memorable masterpieces. 

This morning, I decided to make my kids breakfast. I told them I would make them whatever they desired so we had a schmorgishborg of pancakes, french toast, hole in eggs, scrambled eggs, banana muffins, and Oatmeal served over coconut milk. We ate until we could eat no more. 

Then, Hannah and I decided to roast the turkey I'd pulled out, making our own stuffing and brown gravy. I made homemade steak-potato fries, mashed taters and deviled eggs to go with it for tonight’s new year’s dinner. Tabitha and I used her new Christmas chocolate maker to coat popcorn with the melted candy for tonight’s dessert. 

I’ll be honest, at first I was sad. New Years Eve is always a troublesome holiday for me. When I grew up I was surrounded by family and family friends with a deep seated New Years tradition of family, food and performance fun-banging pots and pans together at each stroke of midnight. I’m sad because I have no tradition to pass onto my generation of kids. No friends that come over each New Year’s Eve. 

But today, it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, our tradition is exactly this-stay Home. Together. As a family. Making food-together.  

And that’s okay, because maybe, one day, when my kids are grown, they will think back fondly to these times in our kitchen, and the recipes that I’m sharing with them now will transcend my lifetime into years of recipes in the kitchen for the future of my family just as the matriarchs of my own past, passed down their recipes to me...