Going home and visiting family has always been something that I found necessary to feel fulfilled in my life. Whether it be to visit my parents, grandparents, cousins or whoever, it gives a person a warm feeling in their heart to be around loved ones. The memories, the childhood home and the feeling of belonging are a few of the things I cherish. There are simply some things only family can provide you. One of those, which is especially dear to me, is the home-cooked food.

Moving out of the house, in the wide open world, you may have left behind the full, balanced and amazingly tasteful meals your parents or grandparents cooked for you. Many people talk about how they missed their friends when moving out to college, but friends come and go. Home-cooked meals are forever with us. They are so much more than just food that tastes amazing. The meals are bursting to the brim with memories and events that they have become associated with in our memory. We may love a certain dish because it reminds of us mom. That hot dish may seem normal to anybody else, but it may bring back memories of a loved one no longer with us. The amazing chip dip will remind us of the annual family gathering and all the people present. That is something you can not put a price on. We will forever carry a part of family and its love in this way. Home-cooked food has a lot more going for it than just good taste.

Whenever you visit home and have your favorite meals again, the grateful feelings you have are ever present. You can tell by the first bite that these meals have something that most others do not -- love. I know for myself, even though I've made the same meal a hundred times over, it simply isn't as good as when my dad cooks it. There is something to be said for the experience of a lifetime. Even though I may have the same recipe in my head, it simply doesn't live up to the artisan cooking it. An extra minute here, an extra dash of seasoning, a little longer in the oven and an extra, secret ingredient are things that may be left out of recipe card. These are things you only learn through years of experience. This is what makes home-cooked food the best and most appealing thing in the world to me.

So next time you head home to visit family, cherish that meal. Cherish the process that goes into what you're eating. There is likely multiple lifetimes that went into some of those meals. Generations of family each taking their own small changes to the recipe that eventually landed onto the table in front of you. Take a moment and appreciate what you have in front of you.