Thursday, August 7, 2008

Comfort Food Memories

As I sit here, recovering from my back surgery (And not being able to sit for very long...yet) I am forced to enjoy what little time I am in any one given position. When I sit, I do as much as I can while sitting, and the same with standing or walking or any other position my body can get in, save lying down. There is just nothing I can do except hold the TV clicker and change channels.

But I sat at my cold puffed rice cereal with a chopped up nectarine and cup of coffee with store bought wheat bread (Temporary due to my surgery) some memories came flooding back to me.

When I was a little girl, we had your A typical household. My father worked (A police officer in Miami) and my mother stayed home (Until my youngest sibling was school age, then she entered the work force in the school system so she could be home when we were home). So on Saturday and Sunday, we relaxed just like everyone else. All of our errands were done on Saturday, or at least those that needed my fathers help. We grocery shopped and did all the heavy lifting chores on the weekend. And on Sunday my parents would sit in their bed with the Sunday paper and Easy Listening style music was on the radio. I would read the Sunday Funnies (Comics) to my younger sister. My parents would have their coffee with them. this was before the days of drip coffee. Now I am dating myself. Heck, even my first coffee pot was a percolator.

But what I remember most was my mother letting my dunk my buttered toast into her heavily sugared, heavily creamed coffee. I remember the fat from the butter swirling into her cup of coffee. So I sit here today, doing the same thing, all the while my husband is looking at me like I am some sort of weirdo. to me, there is nothing more comforting than a connection to food. Do not get me wrong, I also have some bad memories with food, and I swore to myself that I would not do to my children what was done to me with food. I wanted my children to have a good connection and good memories with food.

I live for food. I am cleaning the lunch table and wondering what is for dinner. I love to cook (Waiting to heal from surgery before I can get back in there full time again) and I love to eat what I cook. I would much rather have a friend come over with a covered dish, or a bottle of wine and sit around a table of good food and shoot the breeze. Good friends and good food. to me, that is what life is all about.

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