My family was here in San Francisco for a week-long vacation and while we visited and saw the sights and took lots of pictures, mostly we just ate. A lot.
This is in part because of our involvement and interest in food, and in part because we were in the food-centric Bay Area, where an irresistible gustatory treat is just around every corner. But it is also because food is a powerful way to express our connection, love, and familial bonds.
What are your family food experiences?
At its best, family food is nurturance, culture, shared memories and experiences, and perhaps even a few genetic dispositions to like the taste of one thing and not another. But family, like everything, is a work in progress. People are added through marriage and children, subtracted through death and discord. People themselves change, discover new things, develop allergies and health issues, move across the world, grow older. All this is brought to the family kitchen and dining table where life's transitions are celebrated and traditions are established.
Food also helps to create family that is not necessarily connected through marriage or genes. Once again, breaking bread together, sharing the bounty of the harvest and each other's presence is a powerful bond for human beings.
It was a delight to share the amazing food of San Francisco with my family, especially my college-age nieces who are just discovering their own palates and unique food interests. Our on-going joke was that we kept discovering the Best Ever. Best Ever coffee? Blue Bottle. Best Ever fast food burger? In-n-Out. Restaurant Burger? Nopa. Chocolate croissant? Tartine. Best over-all meal? Greens at sunset.
It is my hope that the sense memories of these tastes and smells and textures will stay with them and continue to weave magic into their lives. I probably won't be able to leave my nieces much in the way of material things, but if I've managed to share even the smallest drop of pleasure, sustenance, inspiration and delight in food and cooking, then I know I've been a decent aunt and can rest in peace: the family traditions will continue, and we will all be fed.
(Image: Dana Velden)
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Comments (5)
Beautiful (and absolutely true) piece!
For us, it's now breakfast on Sunday. The kids have grown and moved away, but when we see them, it's on the weekend and for breakfast. We do it right, with a meat, a bread and eggs. French toast gets maple syrup, eggs get everything done to them and the sausage is always from the butcher who does it right. We sit, we eat, we slurp coffee, we pass around the paper, we talk, laugh and catch up on what happened and what is to come. It's wonderful and makes my week all the more brighter. When friends and family come into town, it's always breakfast at our place.
Sadly, the Christmas period is the only time I get to enjoy the familial table, and all the traditions we've constructed around the holiday get trotted out -- the seafood hotpot on Christmas eve, the sticky-rice-stuffed turkey on the big day, the turkey congee the next morning. It leaves me wistful to think that the next one is a whole 6 months away.
My strongest memories from childhood involve meals around the campfire as well as big meals with my German family. I had an aunt and uncle who had the gift of making people feel welcome, and food was always a big part of that.
@ lawoman, as I was reading I was wondering what my own childrens' strongest family-food memories will be and I'm thinking it probably also will be breakfast. Five or six years ago mornings were really chaotic, so in hopes of restoring order I started making simple hot breakfasts, and sitting them all down together and I read novels to them while they eat. We can't always sit down together at dinner but most of the time but most of the time they're all here before school, plus we've dined our way through some wonderful literature.
They're teens and preteens now and the school schedule has been reworked so drastically for this upcoming year that I don't think we'll be able to continue in this same way.
Sigh...I'm sure going to miss it.
when my grown up sons were small they loved what they now call Mom's chicken. what's that...oh, it's so embarrassing....plop cut up chicken on a cookie sheet. put pats of butter on top, shake some garlic salt & paprika on top. push in a 350 oven & every 15 min. brush the now melted butter on the top of chicken pieces. Arrrgh, it's so fatty. We ate fattier foods in the olden days and I didn't know better then...I showed them and I showed their partners how to make it...my sons said I had left something out of the recipe because when they made it, it didn't taste the same as when I cooked it. The memory of "Mom's chicken" lives on for the boys, although I find it too fatty to eat now.