Food

     Our family is into food.  A lot of the pictures we put on Facebook are of the foods we eat.  We spend a large percentage of our time talking about, reading about, shopping for, preparing, and eating food.  We do try to be healthy about it, and we try not to eat too much.  None of us is overweight, although I have a small spare tire that I'd much rather do without, but I think it's as much a result of aging as eating.
     I've loved food a little more than the average person ever since I can remember.  My mom is at least partly to blame; she was an excellent cook, and made sure to always have some yummy home-made snacks on hand:  chocolate chip, oatmeal or peanut butter cookies, chocolate or spice cake, pecan pie she made with the pecans she brought home from my great-grandmother's New Mexico pecan farm.  She taught me everything and then gave me free reign in the kitchen.  When I was eleven or twelve years old I got interested in making bread, and began to learn to make all sorts of home-made breads.  I began studying French in school, and decided I had to learn to make crepes, pot au feu, and cassoulet.  Living in Southern California, we were lucky enough to have access to the best Mexican restaurants, and Mom gathered recipes to try at home.  I remember one year we gathered all our friends and family and organized a tamale assembly line, making dozens of savory pork tamales for everyone to share.
      I've always been thankful I had a mom who was a good cook, who taught me to love food and cooking.  It's made my kitchen a happy place, where I've had a lot of fun through the years, and still do, cooking with my own children.  Even my boys cook, and do a lot of the cooking for their families.  When they visit, they teach me new recipes.  From Justin, I've learned to make the easiest and most delicious baked salmon.  Josh taught me some tricks for a great chicken parmigiana, and Joe demonstrated how to make a mouth-watering pan-seared ahi tuna with beurre-blanc sauce and wasabi drizzle.
     My granddaughter just brought me some home-made, fresh-squeezed lemonade she made.  Even in the time it took me to sit here and begin writing this, someone got into the kitchen and made something.  That's just how it is around here.  A few weeks ago, my daughters and I headed out for the day to attend a gymkhana.  I drove the horse trailer, while they followed in my daughter, Megan's car, and stopped on the way for snacks and drinks.  Mind you, they have a snack bar at the gymkhanas, but the fare is limited to burgers and hot dogs.  That day, my girls were in the mood for something tastier, and showed up with whole-grain crackers, brie, salame and mandarin oranges.  We never made it to the snack bar.
     I'm sitting here typing, and the smell of popcorn is wafting in from the kitchen.  We never eat ours plain.  It's always garnished with extra butter and parmesan cheese.  Plain would be unthinkable.
     About six months ago, Kaela decided she wanted to try to eat vegetarian for a month.  I pulled my "Recipes for a Small Planet" from the 1970's off the shelf and dusted it off, and we had great fun concocting all kinds of vegetarian delicacies, like nut-and-seed tacos, noodle casserole and hot-and-sour soup.  Although she enjoyed the experiment and it made her aware of some things, like how hard it can be to find good vegetarian food in Mexican restaurants, by the end of the month she was ready to eat everything again.
     I know a few people who don't like to cook, and a few others who have trouble boiling water.  When Megan first moved into her college dorm apartment last year, her new roommates were complaining that they couldn't get the stove to work.  Megan looked behind it, and sure enough, it wasn't plugged in.  Awhile later, one of her roomies complained that the water wouldn't boil, and Megan noted that she had the burner on simmer; evidently she was afraid of burning something if she turned the flame too high.  I'm glad there are people who are clueless and unmotivated about food; if I ever want to open a restaurant, those are the people who will make my business a success.
     Until then, I'll keep on my merry amateur way, feeding family and friends for free.  As for now, it's been over an hour since dinner, and I'm getting a definite vibe from the freezer, where there's a carton of butter pecan ice cream I'm making my way through, one scoop at a time.