The Year I Fell in Love

I close my eyes and inhale as if I were taking my last breath. The scent of the room saturates my olfactors and I am at home.

Buttery onions, melty mozzarella, perfectly browned roast beef all sitting pretty on a pillowy bun. Honestly, I don’t have many memories of family dinners or my mother’s food and it’s not because of family disagreements, but my family was always bustling around and neither one of my parents particularly liked cooking. The foods I clearly remember were always filled with comfort (and butter… same thing, right?). I remember my mother’s spinach soup, my grandmother’s corn casserole, my father’s attempts at Tom Kha, and of course the roast beef sandwiches my family would pair with bright orange macaroni and vibrant strawberries for a quick evening dinner. Family meals were never fancy, and I couldn’t even tell you that they were personal, sometimes we would just scoop the food onto our plates, shovel it into our mouths, and leave to do whatever we were doing before. In my youth, I envied friends whose mother’s and father’s would make objectively amazing dinners, I would frequently wonder how they found the time to make things like eggplant lasagna, homemade pasta sauce, and perfectly seasoned chicken on a daily basis. Little did I know, the food itself was not what I was craving.

Fast forward 12ish years and you can find me in 2019 — A college graduate so burnt out she could hardly function without having a panic attack or wanting to sit in her room and do nothing. I was just coming out of a job that the world told me I wanted, in the middle of a relationship I thought I wanted and was in a living situation that was, to say the least, complicated. I did what any normal person would do, I quit my job, became a barista, and started baking bread almost daily to quell the anxiety that was pounding at the edges of my mind. It worked for a while. A stillness I had never before experienced found me when I least expected it. This audacious stillness had the mind to tell me I needed to take time for myself.

What I found at this time was life-altering in ways so subtle, but so loud. When I made bread it gave me calmness, it allowed me to push my emotions into something inanimate, but something that was created for more than just myself. I found that over time, I would literally break bread with friends and family, and the experience became so much more than just flour and water. Slowly, but surely I started to see that the best meals and their experiences are built through community. Baking turned into cooking, turned into creating and turned into discovering that I have always shown my love through making. I realized that I could share experiences, feelings, and comfort through a single meal, and I fell head-over-heels in love.

I fell in love with the exploration of flavors, freshness, and figuring out the stories I wanted to tell through my newly created culinary journey. I am still at the beginning of this newfound relationship and I have been learning a lot. I am honest to God terrified of what my next steps are, but as I become more enamored with the idea of grit to bring sustenance, I can’t back down. I plan to go to some sort of technical school when I find funding and plan to dive headfirst into this field that is so unforgivingly beautiful. I am now at this point where I wonder whether or not I am making the right decision, but I know that if I am feeling this way, it sure has to be.

Realizing my life’s dream and knowing that I am going to be “grinding” for a long time has made me reflect on my past. How, family meals were never extravagant and always seemed rushed, but when we had them, I could always taste comfort. That’s what I want to give others, the chance to taste an emotion, to experience life, and to know when something is “Made with Love.”