Food is LOVE, people.
My mom told me that the moment I was born, I sucked a bottle dry (No bottle judgment, it was the '80s after all), and panned the room for round two like I had been training my stomach in utero for weeks.
Clearly, I liked to eat.
A LOT.
My older sister, who obviously ate the same foods I did as a child, never quite amassed the same heft that I did. Somehow, I became an ultra-chunk-nugget (pic related), so I can simply attribute all my squishy fat folds to a simple love of eating like a baby horse with access to a trough of Gerber’s finest. Don’t get me wrong, seeing videos like this of myself looking like a baby Chris Farley (thank you to my husband who pointed out my resemblance) makes me ponder if CPS was ever called to inspect my living conditions:
Moving was clearly not an option at the Disneyland parade. And, I think my mom legit just walked away...
Thankfully, I eventually started growing vertically faster than I was growing horizontally by around age three, because otherwise, I may have never learned to walk! (I actually didn’t walk until I was 18 months old – I was probably too busy eating). And, what motivation would I have had otherwise? The world was my oyster**! I had a loving mom who admits she gleefully spooned food in my general direction at the very hint of my discomfort, and I had my dad wrapped around my sausage-like fingers, ready and willing to let me double fist two plates of cake just to make sure I wouldn’t cry on his watch.
(** I’d probably snarf those down, too if it had made it to my highchair!)
Two hands, two plates of cake. Coincidence? I think not.
Growing up our family was the stereotypical southern California suburban, '80s household, and each night we would sit down for a family dinner that my mom would prepare. Weeknight meals were not particularly fancy or exotic, but I remember it was always made with love.
Except for the meatloaf. I was convinced that while all of our other meals were made with love, the meatloaf was the sacrificial lamb made with apathy, sadness, and generalized lamentation that balanced the karma in the universe and made the other meals possible. My dad liked meatloaf night, so maybe it was just me, but I LOATHED meatloaf night, and to passively show my disdain, I tactfully plotted revenge each night by secretly feeding our Dalmatian, Krystal, the meal under the table to garner desert from my culinary captor. I took me well into my 20’s before could even think about giving meatloaf another fair shot, and looking back knowing what I know now, and how I think about food, I wonder if I could have learned to enjoy my mom’s meatloaf if I had been able to be included in the process. No one will know forsure.
Some of my favorite “dinners” my mom would make were when my dad was out of town (somewhat relieving the pressure of a larger meal), and my sister and I got to help her in the kitchen. Even as a child I knew she loved her simple dinners, of scrambled eggs with English muffins, chipped beef on toast, chicken salad on bibb lettuce and cornbread muffins. You could tell by the way her demeanor changed in the kitchen that she was relaxed, and genuinely enjoying making these meals with my sister and me. There was no way we couldn’t have been affected by her undeniable affliction to these humble offerings. And, by letting us in on the fun of preparing her secret guilty culinary pleasures, I learned to think that food was fun, and a joy.
My mom’s unassuming soft and cheesy scrambled eggs, paired with a perfectly tender, toasted English muffin adorned with a melted pool of butter and boysenberry jam just nestling into each nook and cranny was love on a plate. It is the foundation of why I have set out to change the way families look at food and mealtime. When food is fun, kids will eat. When food is made with love, they will try it and decide for themselves.