Food may be my love language and my true persistent joy.
I haven’t cooked a holiday meal in three winters and I miss it. My home renovation is taking much longer than expected, and the kitchen isn’t done. I had hoped to finish the walls and floor before the holidays this year and christian the space with a new stove, but alas, it’s still a work in progress.
For Thanksgiving, I went out looking for a nice traditional meal. Scored two.
This week, I’ve been thinking hard on what I want to eat for the days I stay home for Christmas.
I’ve been loving Maggiano’s this year. Had landed on chicken alfredo linguine and calimari. Then Saturday afternoon at Trader’s Joe’s happened.
No one told me Trader Joe’s is like a microcosm of the New York City food scene. Walking through, I felt like I was home. Before I knew it, I was grabbing food for several days of meals. A baby spinach harvest salad with bleu cheese, cranberries, and candied pecans landed in the basket first.
Creamy mushroom soup and garlic naan next. Because pasta was still on my mind, I grabbed cheese filled chicken sausage links and romano/parmiesan/asiago cheese blend. A box of frozen croissants aux amandes and a brocolli & chedder quiche for the mornings. Thai noodles with garlic sauce, complimented with chicken shu mai and spring rolls. As a slight nod to tradition, I picked up a turkey & sweet potato burito for a quick breakfast or lunch fix.
Everything I grabbed sparked joy.
The coup de grâce was seeing a bright yellow and red label that said: BROOKLYN BABKA! Oh my! I almost turned into a shaking puddle right there in the aisle. Pure joy! I’ve been trying to figure out when I can get to NYC for a few days just to eat and walk around the city. One of the first and last places on my list is Breads, a bakery I first discovered in Union Square. Their chocolate babka is an experience in flavor, freshness, and texture.
Milwaukee has been an absolute pilate cleanser for me. I haven’t missed food so much in quite a long time. Fast food is the primary option, and nothing is exciting. More than that, I never thought “Home for the Holidays” would trigger nosgalia for my time in New York City. Yet this Midwesterner misses the beauty of the Big City and sharing fantastic global foods with neighbors, colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and strangers in so many different ways and venues.
While in New York, most holiday meals were made in an attempt to perfect my memory and skill of my childhood meals. My mom cooked everything from scratch. Thanksgiving dinner was always my favorite meal(s) of the year. In thinking on this, it came to me that my feeling of home and comfort has shifted.
My mom has always been my best and purest representation of love. Trying to recreate her recipes felt like a fellowship in a way. The process of digging into taste and smell memories, pulling on them to recreate and share the dishes with others has been a form of healing and community as well as introducing a part of my Mom in my present time. Even though I miss this process, what hit me today, is that New York was also a pilate cleanser for my life.
I grew and developed in so many ways there, but at the core, I’ve always felt I am the same person I’ve always been. Because I can only see myself from one prespective – looking out from within, and understand myself by reflecting backwards, I’m essentially blind to the profound ways my journey has altered me.
Today I understand I’ve been missing my own tradition of remembrance that’s based on a few fixed points in time. If I shift my focus from nurturing loss at the core of my joy (my mother died nearly 30 yrs ago), I can see how it developed into something so much more encompassing.
Remembering food as communion and community, I remember the first Jamaican spot I became a fan of off of the 6 train’s 180th St stop in the Bronx. I used all my money to move to New York City, so eating out was difficult. Most days for six months I commuted from my Bronx apartment to Manhattan for work. One of my occasional spurlges was a Jamaican beef patty with coco bread. That was nearly twenty years ago. This combination still sparks joy and remembrance of the biggest leap of my life.
I remember a holiday dinner with a former colleague and her mother. They were Puerto Rican and prepared their traditional meal. I don’t remember everything on the table, and I can’t recall if this is the beginning of my love of yuca, but my favorite dish that meal was yuca con mojo. The red onion and garlic in vinegar and butter changed my life. Literally, to this day, almost everything I cook has onion, garlic, and butter – poultry, fish, beef, potatoes, yuca, beans, vegetables, eggs, you name it.
I’m a large batch sweet potato pie maker. I remember sharing my sweet potato pie with colleagues and getting requests each year after.
Before New York, I didn’t like coffee or wine. The City cultivated my taste for both. Two of my three favorite wines came from annual office gifts and the Union Square Farmer’s Market.
It’s so comforting to recall food memories from so many points in time and environments. It’s a reminder that food joy is in continual interactions with environments and people, however, and wherever you find yourself.
Happy Holidays!
Merry Christmas!
Happy New Year!
And a Joy-filled Belly to You All!
Harvest Life 