Food Love

Family dinner is my favorite part of the week! I get so excited to feed everyone and I have been practicing cooking all year to be able to make good food for you guys. It makes me feel safe and secure in our friendship knowing we will all get together on Friday no matter what.

Pitu here are my thoughts about cooking n eating together ( as a mama) cooking and eating with my kids brings me joy and love, it’s a sign of love and care. In my culture, offering food or at least a drink to people/visitors is a must do, a way of being polite, respectful n friendly.

Ana, here are some thoughts on eating together: when i cook for someone or they cook for me, we nourish eachother not only with food, but with the time and care it took to make the food. When I cook together with someone, the giving and receiving intertwine and we learn from each other - about food and about camaraderie and collaboration.

I would say my love language is cooking and baking for people I care about. I think I get it from my mom who shows how she cares for people in her life by cooking for them. She does this because she wants to ensure everyone is well taken care of. Similarly to her, I do it because I remember/think of that person when I’m in the act of creating something whether that’s a tasty meal or delicious dessert. To me, it’s a symbol of love, community, and gathering!

I cook cuz I wish every space people walked into had ample food and I can’t control that but I can make sure my house is like that. It’s really nice to always have something to offer when someone enters your home. a little thank you for being here even if it’s a way for me to make you leave my house but with gift in hand. I have also personally dealt w disordered eating for most of my adult life and the only way to consistently combat that is to have an active cooking practice and ensuring food is always around.
Food makes everything better :)

Ana I’m sending you some thoughts about food and cooking and eating together and sharing food. From my perspective, it's part of the rituals that have been so integral to my birth family and my married family and my kids' family. Food, the preparation of good food, the growing of good food, the shared love of some dishes that we like in both cultures, in our own little space of relying on and benefiting from healthy grown food. All of that is part of the binding ties, the connections, the love and care that gets infused in things from seed to finished product. The picking it, the tending to it as a gardener, and nature and rain and sun, everything that is right and wholesome coming together in some kind of synergy, magic that's also nourishing our bodies and keeping us healthy and keeping us alive. If you put that together with laughter and tears and memories and the preparation and watching people enjoy the food that you've grown and prepared, that's what life's about. That's what it's been about since I was a child. Picking berries down on my knees, eating more berries that I picked, planting potatoes when I was just, you know, half the shovel height high, picking squash and pumpkins in the fall, all of that. It's all part of life and all part of the circle of life and traditions that I pass, I receive, that were passed on to me and that I pass on to you and everyone who follows you. Love you. Bye.

Cooking for my friends and family fills me with pride and joy. I can’t remember a time in my life when food was connected to negative feelings of insecurity and guilt. Feeding loved ones has helped make food an act of kindness!