Food = Love = Food = Love

Chocolate cake from Rao’s Bakery in Port Arthur, Texas

This is my first post here since returning from trip to southeast Texas. I went there at the end of January and returned to the UK over the weekend.

This trip was all about visiting close family, mostly my mother and aunt. My brother and sister flew in for part of the visit too. It had been several years since the last time we all got together.

Anyone who knows me well will be surprised that the theme for this visit wasn’t me doing odd jobs around my mother’s house. It was me cooking for her. Yes, me, the worst cook among her children. She needed a break from cooking for herself practically all the time.

You can stop laughing now, thanks.

Living in the UK has forced me to develop at least enough cooking skills to get by, so it was okay. I made a list of dishes I can cook well enough. We picked from that list. Sometimes she liked something enough to have another round of it. My aunt and siblings also stepped in to make dinner a few times. On rare occasions we got something from elsewhere.

If you are from certain parts of the States, you understand perfectly what all this cooking and eating means. It’s a circular equation ingrained into us as we grow up.

Food = Love = Food = Love … and on and on in an endless circle. Mobius has nuthin’ on us.

When someone visits, everyone eats in celebration. Birthday? Food. Graduation? Food. Pretty much any occasion for showing you care about someone? Food. Feeding someone expresses love. You don’t have to say “I love you” back. You say “Mmm, mmm, this food is so good” and then next time you feed them.

After a funeral, you can tell a lot about the person who died by what people bring to the family home. When Grandma died, all sorts of Lebanese food showed up. When my father died, Cajun food showed up. When Grandpa died, fried chicken showed up. People start to bring food before a death notice hits the newspaper. They keep bringing food until after the funeral. It’s multipurpose food. It feeds the family while the shock of loss is raw so that nobody in the family has to bother with cooking. It feeds mourners after the funeral when people go to the family home to pay their respects and regale each other with stories about the departed. There’s so much food, the refrigerator is still full after that so the family won’t have to cook for a week.

I’ve lived in several places scattered around the USA and two areas in England. I’ve worked in Mexico, Canada and a few countries in western Europe, and visited a couple more. Food always has an important role in society, but most places I’ve been have not quite done our circular equation. If you know the feeling of it deep in your bones, you know what I mean.

During this visit, for a while we were all there at once, a rare occasion. One of us had a birthday, for which we had a cake from Rao’s Bakery. (Well, they had cake. I can’t handle sugar but the USA has ice cream with no sugar added, which I was delighted to eat instead.) Everyone ate. And ate. And ate.

We dove into our local mathematics. When I left, there were plenty of leftovers in the fridge and freezer. Lots of food… unless you know what you’re really seeing.