What Your Learn with Food

Food is a method of storytelling, a family history, and a way to connect cultures. We discount food all the time by not valuing its contribution to our lives and our wholeness. How you relate to food tells the world something about how you relate to the people in your life.

My grandmother - like a lot of grandparents - loved to cook our favorite meals or treats for us, so that every time I came over to visit, there'd be something in the fridge that she put there just for me. The thing was, my favorite food was "leftovers." I loved nothing more than mixing and matching stuff from the fridge and making my own concoction.

Know what she did? Grammie would make a pan of lasagna and maybe some "chop suey" (her French Canadian version) and every time I'd come over and find this, I never once realized that the "leftovers" were complete and wholly untouched. (I wasn't the brightest kid.) But she made my favorite every time. That, and a pan of toll house cookies on the counter.

Food is a Language and a Culture and Ties to So Many Memories

Maybe you didn't have the kind of family who cooked a lot of meals at home. You might have a favorite delivery order. Or maybe you were a fussy eater and got by on pizza, hot dogs, and bologna sandwiches.

I had a friend who's parents came straight from Italy. Their tuna sandwiches were made with olive oil and pepper, and she yearned for mayonnaise like the other kids at school. She'd trade her sandwich sometimes, not knowing that the other kid often just threw hers away. Tuna with just oil? (Kids don't realize this is delicious.)

Maybe you have special types of meals that always bring back memories. Barbecue or pancake Sundays or maybe your mom made the best saag paneer in town. Did your family eat formally and quietly, or loud and messy?

We Learn Through Food, Also

I'm a competent cook. I can feed myself and others. Nothing I make is especially complicated, and my flavor profiles all tend to be salt and spice based. I use a cast iron skillet more than any other cooking implement. I like to say that I can make a plate with love, but if I put a meal together for a few people, each plate is coming out completely finished before I get the next one made. I haven't mastered timing all that well.

When I make something, I think about lessons or family stories. Every time I make potatoes, I think about how my mom's father considered the house completely devoid of food if there weren't potatoes around. If I cook eggs, I remember my mom's first attempt tossing an egg in the microwave, followed by her first time cleaning out the insides of the microwave.

Some people batch cook. They make all the toast, all the eggs, all the bacon, and they run a little assembly line for breakfast. Other people find that delivery is the best meal no matter what, because maybe their parents weren't known for their cooking prowess and they didn't teach you.

There are so many lessons around food - from how to make it, how to eat it, what it means to a region.

For instance, I love "peasant" foods, the cheap things that people used to stretch out meals in any culture. Rice, or lentils, or polenta, or corn bread. It's different everywhere, but there are foodstuffs that are often sold for LOTS of money in fancy restaurants that everyone knows to be the "filler" foods of a culture's eating.

I've always thought that the Bible story of Jesus feeding people with seven loaves and seven fishes is a story about a lot more bread being passed around than fish.

Cooking is Story Time

My Aunt Bea was envious of my mom's deviled eggs, and decided to make them herself for one family gathering, but these were the days before the internet, and she didn't want to ask anyone for help, because my relatives would've told her to "just let Diane do it." So she boiled some eggs, scooped out and threw away the yolks, and replaced the middle with mustard and mayonnaise. She sprinkled paprika on top, and set out the plate later at dinner with such joy.

Until the first and then second person bit into the eggs and spit them back up. (The yolks are part of deviled eggs - mustard is not.)

When I hop in a ride share with a driver from somewhere other than me, I ask about the kinds of foods their family would cook for friends coming over to dinner. Not treasured guests, because that's something quite different, but meals that maybe a friend from school would be fed at your house.

I bet something comes to mind when I ask that. What did it make YOU think about? Tell me in the comments.

Food brings stories.

Work is Like a Meal

What we've done before comes to bear on how we operate day to day. Food is a great analogy for work, because you have to take ingredients, transform them into something more cohesive, and it often requires a bit of planning and consideration.

What are you cooking up at work? Do you need help with the menu? What's something you might borrow from the other great cooks around you?

Chris...