Let's talk about... FOOD!

I love food.  That's one of those simple things about me that will never change and only ever becomes more pronounced over time.  Food is life, and life is for the making of food.  I've always loved to cook and bake, but I've never taken any formal lessons.  I'm probably doing a lot of it wrong, but I love almost nothing more than being in a kitchen.  I'll let you make the joke for yourself on that one...  Truly, though, my love for cooking has nothing to do with growing up in some kind of traditional mom-as-homemaker household.  Both my parents worked (and still work) very long hours, and the house duties were seemingly split democratically right down the line of skill.  My mom can cook, and my dad can clean, and so that's what they did.  Some of my most vivid childhood memories are of Friday nights, when they house got a top-down cleaning from Dad, and of Sunday afternoons, when Mom cooked sauce and meatballs.  Every single week was the same thing, and I took it completely for granted, but thankfully, I've adopted at least the essence of these acts.  I clean obsessively when I'm anxious or upset, and at all other times, I cook.

The most prominent collection of memories
from my childhood: pizza at Sergi's in Potsdam, NY!

Squid sauce and fried fish for dinner every single
Christmas Eve for the past 26 years.

Acting as guest chef in my brother and sister-in-law's kitchen.

I grew up in a third generation 100% Italian family, so food was the name of the game at every holiday and gathering.  My paternal Grandma made sauce and "magic meatballs" (magic because they magically put my brother and me to sleep on the 3-hour car ride home), and my maternal Nani makes the most frighteningly delicious spinach bread.  Nani is a pretty religious woman, but I'm convinced she's made a little deal with the devil over the texture of that bread because it is SINFUL.  In the tradition, my mom continues to make sauce (we don't call it gravy in my family...) for pasta, lasagna, manicotti (pronounced madigot in our house), baked ziti, Christmas Eve squid sauce, and I can't continue listing because my mouth is watering too much.  I'm not sure how it compares to some great chef's tomato sauce, but to me, my mom's sauce will always be the best.  The texture is always so smooth, never too lumpy, but never watery.  It takes on this deep, plump, vivacious ruby red after hours of simmering, and the aroma swirls around the house long into the night, even after cooking, eating, and cleaning have long finished.  My mom's sauce is that combination of raw ingredients and dash of je ne sais quoi that eludes me to this day.  I've made plenty of sauces, but they never, never come anywhere close to Mom's.  I can't figure it out.  I consider myself pretty good at cooking, but something as simple as tomato sauce is juuuuuust beyond my grasp.  I have an inkling that my mom's secret ingredient is the most powerful one of all: love.  So cliché, I know, but there is no other explanation.  I'm betting she became imbued with that power 30 years ago when my brother was introduced on the world because that's the moment she became a mom.  Hopefully one day I'll have a kid or two, so I like to think that my best sauce days are still ahead of me.  Thankfully, sauce isn't the only thing in the world to be cooked, and I think I put a pretty good spin on a lot of my mom's other dishes.

I can't remember the first time I attempted to cook something.  I don't recall asking my mom for cooking lessons, but I do remember sitting at the kitchen counter every night in middle and high school doing my homework while Mom cooked dinner.  I must have just observed and absorbed everything, and the first thing that's always stuck in my mind is garlic sautéing in olive oil.  My mom never used recipes until the internet made it easy to find and print in the days before smartphones and tablets.  Everything was made by memory and deft skill.  I don't remember anything burned or poorly made, though most dishes leaning toward the safe side culinarily.  One of my favorites was tuna noodle casserole (or tuna nuna casserole as I thought it was pronounced until well into my teens).  And spaghetti carbonara, lentil soup, chili, spaghetti and meatballs (homemade, obvi), chicken piccata, "Spanish rice" (rice, corn, salsa, beans, ground beef).  Good '90s food with an injection of Italian tradition.  Every night was a sit-down affair with all four of us.  We said grace until my brother and I rejected the religiously-tinged phrases.  Grace was replaced with a ritual of holding hands and saying "I love you" to everyone at the table.  The cloying sweetness of a functional family, quelle horreur.  All of that food tasted so good because it had been lovingly prepared by my little momma.

My own spaghetti carbonara

I started cooking for myself after college in my pathetic makeshift studio kitchen in DC.  No great success there.  I ended up making simple microwave rice and pasta dishes almost every night. The house I lived in in Virginia had a full kitchen, but by that point, I realized that the problem didn't lay with the size of the kitchen, but the amount of mouths being fed.  I had really only ever cooked just for myself, so I didn't bother to put much thought or creativity into it.  Then I moved to France and had both someone to cook for and the immense inspiration of the food capital of the world.  Now I cook every single night for Ben, and although perhaps not a voracious gourmand, he's as appreciative a recipient as any.  I feel genuinely fulfilled being able to cook for someone I love, with a license to make pretty much anything I want because I'm dating the least picky eater in the world.  That said, we've had to put a limit on all the baking as we don't make enough money to buy larger pants sizes.

Banana bread.  In the 10€ bread pan

Starbucks chocolate cinnamon bread

The most incredible apple pie...

Perfect lattice crust from scratch, thank you very much.

The perfect chocolate pudding pie
(from scratch, never from a box!)

And the perfect brownies.  I go through a lot
of recipes to find the ONE.

My one and only Martha Stewart recipe:
oatmeal raisin bars.

All of these ventures into cooking and baking have put me into a reflective state.  What is the draw of cooking for me?  Is it that I really love to eat?  Do I enjoy feeding people?  Do I like the grand variety of textures, colors, aromas, tastes, and combinations that can be produced when given a little heat, a little time?  Within this reflection, I've circled back around to the lessons I learned and absorbed from my mom.  It's all about the loooove.  Seriously.  I realized that cooking a good meal is one of the most natural ways I know to show my love.  What's better than spending my time on a recipe that requires a little skill, a lot of patience, and some beautiful cuts of meat and chops of veggies?  I lose myself in the acts of slicing and dicing and in the discovery of new tastes.  I'm developing my sixth sense for flavor combinations, admiring the tang and diversity of citrus, the incredibly utility of cornstarch, honey, coconut milk, and bouillon, the rich deliciousness of crème fraiche, the sweet candy-like texture that butter gives to sautéing vegetables (ça c'est très français).  I've discovered that making soup - chicken noodle, potato leek, butternut squash, French onion, lentil - is basically a panacea and the epitome of comfort food.  The humble garlic and onion are the fundamentals to most of the meals I prep, and chopping those cloves and bulbs has become a soothing ritual for me.  The familiar scent of garlic or onion in olive oil is a living connection to the past, to cherished childhood, that links to the present.  As I've written about so many times, living abroad makes me a little heartsick at times, and the act and sensory experience of cooking keeps me connected to the memories of love back home.

Chicken noodle, cures the common cold.

Chili!

Lentil soup.

Potato leek, very French.

Cooking takes time and attention.  It's an investment in a fundamental act of survival.  We must eat to survive, but survival doesn't require gourmet meals.  It's possible to get by on the bare minimum, either without the means to create or the creativity for the meals.  So why do we spend time selecting the juiciest and plumpest morsels in the market, slaving over a hot stove, reading and re-reading recipes, and delicately stirring, scraping, and flipping to achieve that perfect concoction?  Making delicious, interesting, healthy meals is the heart of showing someone you care enough to put in real effort on their behalf.  My food-centric childhood and ancestry are now manifesting their powers in the food capital of the world.  Living in France has unlocked this potential in me that I think would otherwise have laid dormant.  Maybe it's because I live with someone now, but I think there's really something in the water here that helps to imbue all my meals with je ne sais quoi.  C'est l'amour!

In the zone.

French onion soup.  C'est l'amour!