I finally had a few minutes to catch up on my mail after the holiday. Along with the usual requests for donations, (are you all getting many of them?), a couple of magazines were there. I started with Cooking Light. There's a cheesecake on the cover and I wanted to see how they made it "light". I paged through the magazine, and for some reason, stopped at the editor's page. I think the fact that the editor is a man attracted me to the page.
The editor had not written the usual rundown on the magazine's content, but turned the page over to a blogger's story. Kelli Pryor and her husband adopted two baby girls in China 10years ago. She writes about that day, and how four people became a family. I was pulled in by this story. The theme was food. I thought about the last three weeks of cutting, chopping, baking, roasting, blending, mixing, shopping and planning Thanksgiving. I worked 3-12mid, then got up early each morning to start another cupcake, vegetable, stuffing preparation, running to the store. I was not unique, everyone had the same story. When I got to work, we were asking each other, "What did you make today?", "What's your menu?", "How big is your turkey?", the conversations were all the same, whether I was on the phone with my sister or cousin or at work.
We loved talking about recipes and how long to roast a turkey. Some remembered special dishes and others could not remember if their grandmothers stuffed the turkey. This editorial that I read the day after Thanksgiving gave me "more food" for thought. The story revolved around the day the babies were adopted. Their new mother had the two babies in the room and they were crying, one on each of her knees. She tried singing to them, talking to them, bouncing them on her knees. They wailed broken heartedly. When her husband returned to the room, he found all three of his new family crying. He rolled a cart from room service through the door and stationed it between the beds. He took one of the babies on his knee, handed his wife chopsticks, took a set for himself and uncovered an array of noodles, egg custard and greens. They fed the babies and themselves. At that point, the babies settled down and one laughed. They had discovered the oldest, common bond, food. So with this story, I realized why we cook the meals at the holidays and throughout our lives. It's the bonding that we look forward to. The family gathered around the table, as our first ancestors, the hunters and gatherers, rounded the fire while the meat browned. It's the love for each other that makes the kitchen the most important room in the home. It's wanting to feed those we love when we can't give them anything else. It's not what we made, it was the fact that it brought together families and that's what it's all about.
