Gabe has shared why he wanted to start this blog and his back story with you, so I decide I would share mine. Now I won’t be writing a letter to food because it will come off as a jealous bitter broken hearted love letter, full of accusations and blame for my flaws and failures. The letter would detail all the ways that food let me down and tried to break my spirit. How I am better than that now, but in the end I would let it know that with all that I have said I would take it back anyhow and beg it to love me the same way that I loved it. There would even be a few tear stains at the bottom to show just how lost and lonely I am without it. In short it would be pathetic and leave me embarrassed that I showed so much my true emotions. And really NONE of us what that.
I don’t remember when it started this love hate relationship that I have with food. As a child food seemed so simple, it was just there when I needed it even when I didn’t realize it. Someone else would put a plate down in front of me, or hand me a bowl and I would eat. On a hot day it was exciting to get a popsicle or an ice cream cone, in the winter a cup of hot chocolate. Other than that I remember very few feelings about food. In fact I don’t even remember having favorites or any that I disliked. We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, so my mother’s specialities were casseroles. I remember tuna casserole, a meat and potato layered dish and her signature dish pork chops in kind a rice bake, this was the only way to eat my mother’s pork chops because usually she over cooked them so much that my jaw would hurt from chewing. The only other person I relate to food in my childhood is my grandfather. I spent my Spring Breaks and big chunks of my summers with him and grandmother, he was retired and she worked full time, so my days were spent with him. His speciality was pancakes, they were so light and fluffy and often I had to beg him not to put bananas in mine. Often when eating his pancakes it wasn’t out of the ordinary to bite into a chunk of baking soda, see that was his secret, he under mixed the batter to keep it the finished product fluffy and trust me those powdery surprises were worth it because trust me I have never had fluffier pancakes than his.
Then my teenage years hit and yes like many other relationships in a teenage girls life I assumed food was out to get me and didn’t really want the best for me. I started flirting with anorexia, I wouldn’t say that I ever feel deep into it’s grasp but I came pretty close. These years are dark and really there isn’t much to say about how food impacted those years because mostly I avoided it. It was sometime in my late teens that I started to allow food back in my life, I can’t say that there was any kind of epiphany that made me want to change my ways, it was slow but steady. Maybe I started excepting myself, maybe I was happy leaving the teen angst years behind, but I started a new phase in my relationship with food.
In true ironic form my next phase was as a cook. I spent early 20’s loving to cook. I would scour cook books for new and exciting ways to play with food. I tried often to replicate many of my favorite foods from restaurants. I started baking, I loved baking. I admit to a bit of an obsession with Martha Stewart, while I felt inspired by her I always knew that I was still failing when it came to food, compared to her at least. Like most every hobby or fascination I have flirted with I eventually grew tired of my time as a cook. What was my next phase, that would be alcohol and like all mid-twenty somethings, food was just something to make the night at the bar not as painful. These years are just a blur, I believe there was a lot of pizza and fried food, I believe that cereal became a staple in my diet during this time.
There is one more important aspect of my relationship that needs to delved into before I move into the present and that is my on and off again years as a vegetarian. Since even before the non-eating years happened I stopped eating meat. I from time to time give up meat but often I return to the belief that if god didn’t want us to eat meat he wouldn’t have made animals taste so good. I mean even as a teen with an eating disorder bacon was my favorite food to not eat. It was with my second pregnancy that I think I finally excepted that I was meant to be a meat eater, I was a four year vegetarian at that point but the child that had control of my body at that time was against fake meat. If tried to eat something that hadn’t once had a heartbeat, I was practically throwing it up before I had swallowed it. So at that point I decide I would eat animals again for my sybiant, but as soon as he was out I was going off the sausage, if you will. Well that never happened, I fell in love with meat all over again! I don’t think I will ever give it up ever, ever again.
Food now, after having a children, I want a new relationship with food. I no longer want to hate it, I want to understand it, respect it, except it. I don’t want either of my children, most especially my daughter to endure the same tumultuous relationship with food that I have (had). I want them to see food as something that nurtures us, that makes us stronger, that has no power over us. I hope to instill in them that we can enjoy food in healthy ways that should never involve guilt. Hell I want that for myself. So that is my journey now, that is what I hope to document with this blog.
It seems that, maybe, I did put more of myself in here than I had intended to. But I guess that is what has to happen to start this, I need to be honest with myself to truly see the changes that I need to make. I am looking forward to see how I do, I may fail, more than once, at this but I won’t give up.
Kate
