MY VIEW: Food is a legacy

Food. It’s such an important word to people of all walks of life because food brings us together. Now before this starts sounding too much like one of those cheesy food commercials with the really happy family and emotional music, I want to describe my own relationship with food. It’s a pretty good one I think. Food is there for me when I’m stressed, breathing down my neck and telling me I could take a break from homework to grab a bite. It’s also there when I need to fill the bottomless pit that is my stomach after school.

Food hasn’t always been my friend, but it’s not been my enemy either. I guess that makes this relationship fairly neutral. Eating aside for now, I love food because I love to bake. Forget cooking. I can’t handle the heat, but, for me, baking is really where it’s at. When I get the chance, I occasionally like to try new recipes. Things like cupcakes, cookies and cakes are my specialties, but I don’t just bake sweet treats. I also enjoy helping my parents out with foods that aren’t so sweet. Maybe I’m not always the most reliable when it comes to keeping an eye on something that’s in the oven, but I love the process of making the food.

Putting all the ingredients together is what I love. My mom has taught me plenty of recipes. These were mostly of the dessert sort, but she also learned those from her mom. What’s really interesting to me is how food is passed down through the generations. Important recipes like my grandma’s chicken noodle soup were probably learned from her grandma. These things have been passed down for so long, and now they’ve finally reached me. I definitely don’t know all of the recipes my grandma knows. I mean, she could bake months worth of food and not touch the same recipe twice. My mom knows plenty of the recipes that my grandma knows, but she has added a pretty significant list of her own dishes.

My mom is the baking queen. She can whip up anything from a pretty big cake to tens of dozens of cupcakes for a bake sale. She knows so many dessert recipes and helps me when I need to bake something for school. She really is incredible, and I know I’m not up to her level of expertise, but someday I hope to be.

While my mom does the baking, my dad barbecues. I’ve never exactly been a fan of meat, but he can make the best ribs and steak I have ever tasted. I might be a little biased, seeing as this is the food I grew up eating, but I think that’s what’s so great about food. The fact that it’s so personal and made to be passed down from generation to generation is great!

I know my friends have a different idea than I do of what tastes good, but that’s because the food they grew up eating and enjoying is different from mine.

Now let’s go back to the cheesy commercial with the happy family and emotional music. Food really does tie people together and building new recipes on top of others for your children and their children to use is like building your own personal legacy within your family. It’s almost like keeping a little part of someone alive even after they’ve gone, and I think that’s pretty incredible.