Turning 40 And Reflecting On Food

It is such an odd feeling each time I have turned the page on a decade of my life. 10 I was so excited and proud to be 2 whole digits, 20 excited to no longer be a teenager, 30 feeling like are real adult and now today I am celebrating my 40th birthday. I do not know if it is due to the chaos the world is in or the gray hairs appearing or just that I have changed and matured, but this year just feels different. I am not excited like I was with past milestone birthdays, but it is not a bad thing, I am not sad about it, rather more reflective. The passing of my husband's beloved Grandma, the passing of our dog, the changes that have occurred due to the virus, all of which has occurred in the last 5 months. For the sake of this blog there is one particular vein of thought I have been going down, which is the relationship I have had with food throughout the years. From being poor, to eating for weight loss, then eating for health, to eating for a well-rounded good life, all of which I have learned from and altered the relationship that I have with food.

As a child being raised by divorced parents, primarily my single mom, we were poor. Most of the time we did ok, but there were times I remember my mom making tomato soup out of fast food ketchup packets. There are always moments in time that changes us for the rest of our lives, we usually do not know it until years later. One of those moments was one time when she told us to eat dinner without her because she had something to do. When we were finished, she shews us out of the kitchen so she could clean up. It was then that I walked in on my mom hungrily eating the little bits of our leftover dinner. She sacrificed her portion because she wanted to make sure we ate enough. The next day at school while eating the breakfast provided, the thought I had with each bite was, “My mom doesn’t have this,” so I hid away my banana. Then again at lunch, half of my sandwich.

Coming home from school I was so excited; my mom came home from work a half hour after us and it seemed like an eternity. She looked tired and stressed, but as always ready to hug us up and ask us about our day. After my brother and sister had run off to play, I ran to my backpack exclaiming I had a surprise for her and presented her with the banana and sandwich. The look on her face was confusing to me as I did not understand the roller coaster of emotion that this brought on her. Finally, a smile and the look of love in her eyes as she accepted the food. As an adult now thinking back, I see now why food means love, not just for me, for many others as well. Thankfully, this was a very short-lived part of our lives and the worse it ever was, but it was one of those points in life that permanently create who I now am as a person.

One of the great things about being poor is knowing how to make every penny count and having both a mom and a grandma who cook from scratch and my mom who had a garden whenever she could. This was again a lesson I would not fully understand until later as an adult while learning how to shop on a budget. Baking has always been something I have loved doing, particularly bread. This was the first time I was going to the store to buy all the ingredients to bake regular sandwich bread. The list included 5 pounds of flour, a shaker of salt, a pound of sugar and a jar of bread yeast all of which came to a total close to $15 at the time. At first $15 felt like a lot of money, but 12 loaves later of quality bread my perspective changed. I understood “from scratch” was not just for the love of cooking, it was a way of providing what would cost more than my budget allotted for a fraction of the cost and in a more nutritious, unprocessed manner.

There are so many more food related moments in my life I could take you down, but I will save those for another ‘Food For Thought’ post.

Until next time, have a piece of cake to celebrate my 40th birthday with me!

Jacque