Fall makes me want to bake, pies especially. I want to make roast chicken dinners with all the fixings and apple pie for desert. I want to bake homemade bread. I want to cook pots and pots of soup. I want to make jam and applesauce. I want to create hearty meals for my family.
But I don’t have a family to cook for. I don’t even have any fruits and vegetables to harvest and I don’t know how to bake bread. I’m a modern woman with a house, a car and a career. I’ve done it all on my own with no husband which is a source of pride because I’ve often been labelled as “dependant.” And yet...there it is; this yearning. So where does it come from?
For generations, the women in my family have harvested the fruits and vegetables they’ve grown. Waste was the ultimate sin. Each season brought a new crop and a new opportunity to create something wonderful. Cooking is an expression of creativity. To take the same basic ingredients and turn them into a delicious meal is magical. And what they created wasn’t just food, it was memories and love. Strawberry tarts mean spring is here, it’s graduation time! A pot of soup is a pot of comfort, a warm hug from the inside out. So I’ve come to realize that this yearning comes from a connection to the women who came before me, from a desire to express my creativity and something else; something more basic and yet more important. It’s very simple: Food = Love.
Love is like those fruits and vegetables. It needs to be harvested and something magical created with it. I have a lot of love to give and I’ve been wasting my crop. I share it with my friends, my siblings and my parents but, until recently, I’ve avoided sharing that love with a partner. Choosing not to harvest that love and share it with someone special has left me unsatisfied. I’ve started to harvest that fruit but, just like cooking, every recipe is not a keeper. Fortunately, love is a crop that ripens often. So I’m going to take some time to let the fruit ripen again and then I guess I’ll try a new recipe.
Love can overcome a badly burned bitter applepie and somehow make it taste sweet when shared with the right people. I agree, its not the actual 'food', its the 'experience and memories' that it creates. Love is a form of God’s power; awesome, mighty, uncomprehendable, and unique to each person
ReplyDeleteWe are not meant to see defeat in one baked pie that didn`t turn out as expected, we are meant to continue to create and seek that future pie, with its intended sweetness and perfectness as it was meant to be
Or, something like that……
I totally understand where you're coming from on this one - especially in the Fall when I become obsessed with cooking meals for my friends and self-made family. It's an expression of your love and connectedness to something bigger than yourself, creating warmth and closeness. I feel it also brings me closer to my mom and my aunts and my grandma's. Monica
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