I grew up in a family oriented around food. Breakfasts were spent bleary-eyed on a barstool between my siblings, munching on gummy vitamins and stirring the milk into my Malt-o-Meal until it was the perfect consistency. School lunches featured funny notes written on napkins and treasured leftovers from the night before. Dinners were by far the most special. Mom’s cooking, paired with a required spot at the table, meant that every night was an opportunity to remember why we liked being a family. There were jokes and stories, recounting of the day’s triumphs and failures and plans made for the upcoming weekend or vacation. Food underscored all the conversation, bringing a level of physical nourishment that supplemented the emotional. We eventually transitioned out of mandatory table-time and moved our plates to the couch, surviving all six seasons of Lost while scarfing down meatloafor group-gasping our way through the cliff hangers of "Game of Thrones" with laps loaded with Indian takeout or mom’s quiche. But even when the table no longer became the center of the eating activities, we still spent the end of the day together, sharing in an experience that made time together not only mandatory, but the much appreciated norm.
It wasn’t always Brady-Bunch-picture-perfect. Meals sometimes ended in tears or fights or untouched plates of whatever eggplant concoction mom vowed never to prepare again as she reached for a take-out menu. In a family that values food so highly, your bowl had to be protected. Using your arm as a barrier, hunching low over your feast and making it aggressively clear that the place mat in front of you was private property, the attack of enemy forks of your neighbors, poking around in quest for your unfinished meal, had to be met with similar ferocity.
My relationship with food became a tangible way to reconnect with my family or childhood, especially my mother. A care package full of her chocolate chip cookies was always the surest reminder that everything would be ok. Her risotto, her lemon chicken, her miso soup and her Frito pie have achieved Michelin status in my mind. To me, her scrapbooked cookbook, handwritten and featuring drawings, articles, pictures and dates, is the pinnacle of culinary purity. So many features of what I now consider to be me- a love of coffee, a deep desire to binge watch every Food Network show, a constant yearning to make every party a dinner party- were stirred, mixed, kneaded and baked in my childhood kitchen.
Dorm-life deprived me of immediate access to a kitchen. I crashed my friend’s apartments to bake my mom’s cookies, squinting at a picture she texted me of her original recipe, or attempt to re-create the stir-fry my family would get from the Thai place down the road, reveling in the reconnection I felt to my roots. As I moved into my own house, one with a shiny white kitchen and an oven I could call my own, I fully recommitted to cooking. I’d fallen into the trap of cafeteria food or drive-through convenience, but now I had no excuse not to perfect my scrambled eggs or learn to prepare the perfect Bolognese. Good food and better company marked my adolescent eating, and with apron securely tied and whisk in hand, I intend to continue the legacy at a new table.
