What’s Food Got to Do With It? A lot as it turns out.

In my early twenties, shortly after graduating from college and breaking up with the man I’d thought I’d marry, I moved to New York. Manhattan. The City. I sublet the living room of a terrible, 5th floor, walk-up apartment some acquaintances inhabited. The floor was so slanted that if you closed the door too forcefully  on your way out, the freezer swung open, and the only appliance I really remember was a hot dog toaster, one of those “how did this make it to the market?” fad items in which you could toast two hot dogs and two buns concurrently. It, like the apartment, seemed perennially dirty, crusted with crumbs and grease, though I never actually saw it being used. As I struggled to manage heartache and a certifiably insane boss, I lost sight of the comfort and succor eating well provides. Growing up in Louisiana, food was central: family, traditions, holidays, celebrations, mourning…they all, in some ways, constellated around cooking and eating together. In NYC, however, thin was in, and meals became lonely tributes to the bevy of fat-free fare that studded the inner aisles of my neighborhood Gristedes. I loved NY with a passion, but my life there was imbalanced and hard. After three years, I decided to move back to the South, nearer my family. But then I met the man who would become my husband.

He loved to eat, and he loved me. Though he lived in DC, we spent as much time together as our budgets, work and the USAir shuttle would allow. Our days in NY were magical- long, lazy walks punctuated by meals and libations whenever the mood struck. As I fell in love with him, I slowly reclaimed my appetite, for food, life and love, which had been tamped down and jaded.

Fast forward a few years, and our first son arrived. Nursing him was so elemental and fulfilling. In feeding him, it became clear that I was also nourishing myself. Watching him grow and thrive, I realized how much I’d deprived myself by letting go of my culinary roots, by forgetting all the afternoons spent in the kitchen next to my mom, grandmother and aunts, stirring a gumbo, canning cranberry sauce, making teacakes. In the halo of these memories, I returned to the kitchen, ostensibly on my son’s behalf, but in retrospect I see it was for me, too. I challenged myself to correct the erroneous notions of health and nutrition that had become etched in my brain: how could I give my little boy the best if I didn’t really know what that was? How could I encourage optimal eating habits in him if I didn’t model them myself?

As I cooked and read and learned and ate, we all grew. My husband’s waistline might wish for different, but there is nothing fat-free to be found in our home now. My firstborn is almost 6, his brother is 3, and they eat with the passion and appetite of Mario Batali. We spend every Sunday morning at the farmer’s market- tasting, eating, befriending, supporting. We talk about animal welfare and agriculture in America, and use our purchasing power to try and make our voices heard in these increasingly political and moral realms. Our kitchen is the nexus of our home, the place from which I write my blog, run a small catering business, feed my boys and make yet another batch of fresh ricotta.

Cooking for others is one of the most basic ways of loving them. In taking care of my family, I have come full circle, learning again how to nurture myself. The rough edges of my twenties have given way to the softer contours of my advancing thirties. There’s something about a warm hearth, a canning pot bubbling away on the stove, the smell of freshly baked anything, laughing as my little boys ask for “more cornichons, please” that leaves me feeling whole. I am happy, fulfilled, sated.