The Food Connection

The very first friends we made when we moved here six years ago are leaving our area and I feel a great loss. They helped us move in, they invited us to their son’s first birthday party and he became our daughter’s first friend.  We’ve celebrated many birthdays together, had countless game nights and picnics at the beach, done preschool co-ops and served together in church responsibilities. Earlier this week I went to help them pack up their house and my friend made these amazing cupcakes that she often makes and I love them.  As I shoved two of them in my face, I realized that I have this recipe and for the rest of my life when I make these cupcakes, I will think of Christina and her family.  

Food connects us in a way that I don’t think anything else can because it combines the power to trigger memories through multiple senses with sociality, family togetherness, emotion and tradition.  My grandmother made homemade bread and my father loved coming home to the smell of it so my mother learned how to make it.  Today I still make the same recipe and love the smell of homemade bread because it was a regular part of my childhood and connects me to my mom and grandmother. What would Christmas be without Grandma’s cinnamon rolls or Nana’s cookies?

One of the best presents I’ve ever received is a cookbook from a very dear friend. In the 18 months we lived in the same place, she was constantly trying new recipes and compiling her tried and true ones.  We ate probably 100 dinners together and she was constantly bringing me bread or muffins or desserts that she had tried out.  Even though I haven’t seen her in years, every time I make her sloppy joe recipe, I remember how she brought them to me with homemade rolls after my first daughter was born.  Then she feels close to my heart again.

Another friend made the most amazing pepperminty Christmas cookies for us one year and I loved them so much she shared the recipe with me. Every Christmas when I make them, I think her and laugh about the time she went on and on about how terrible it would be to have a baby in the summer, only for me to then announce I was pregnant and due in August.

As a child my husband loved his neighbor’s peanut butter fudge, which she made for him every year. She passed away a few years ago but we still remember her kindness when we make her fudge.  

Every winter I make borsht, a soup from Ukraine that I ate often as a missionary and while mine doesn’t taste nearly as good as Mama Nesheret’s, it takes me back to when I sat in her living room and talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ with her daughters and played silly games.  

My husband and I went to Friendly’s on our first date when we were 17. He thought I ordered water to be cheap but I explained that I don’t like carbonation because it fills me up and then I can’t eat as much, which is apparently when he fell in love with me.  He introduced me to Reese's Pieces sundaes and recently gave me a huge tub of peanut butter sauce as a gift.  Every time we eat a sundae loaded with peanut butter sauce, hot fudge and Reese's Pieces, we go back to that first time we sat nervously across the booth from each other and it makes us smile.  

Life is enriched by relationships and shared experience and food is often the center of those interactions. I love how it connects us and that a shared dinner table can become a shared heart.  There is a repetitiveness with food because we eat every day and celebrate things every year that renews those connections over and over again, making them strong. I hope that even though Christina won’t be coming to our annual Christmas party anymore that she will make the cranberry nut bread I usually make (that she loves) and that she’ll feel our love over the miles.