Food Friday

This week was my spring break from school, so between having no class this week and only working shipment at ON (read:  wear the most comfortable clothes they let you) I haven't really had any outfits worthy of a Fat Fashion Friday.  So I thought this week we could instead talk about food, since Lipid Love's subtitle says food, but I haven't actually talked about it yet.

My mom doesn't cook. Now, I don't think that everyone on earth needs to be able to cook.  If you hate cooking and you have the means not to, by all means eat out every night.  However, I don't think it could hurt for everyone to have basic cooking skills, whether or not they choose to use them.  And if you can't afford to go out to eat every night, you owe it to yourself to learn.  (If it's a choice between going out for Chinese or going to college, you probably should pick college...)

Later, when she eventually went back to work after my father moved out, we basically ordered in most nights of the week.  We ate Wendy's two nights a week and then Italian and Chinese with TV dinners to make up the rest of it.  In hindsight, I think my mother has a really complicated relationship with food.  Honestly, I think she hates it, and then if she finds she likes something, she feels really guilty about liking it.  We were accused of being hungry all the time and told we should eat less. I would ask for chicken soup when I was sick and she would tell me that if I was really sick, I wouldn't be hungry.

Then when I went to college, I discovered all kinds of food that I loved!  I remember one of the things was stir-fry.  I would make them for myself for lunch when I came home from college.  "Why are you eating that?"  Mom and my brother would say, and call me weird.  I would have thought they would be happy that I was eating vegetables instead of pizza rolls, since they constantly called me fat but somehow I ended up criticized for it.

The amazing thing is, that despite all of that, I love food.  I didn't inherit my mothers feelings about it at all.  And, the more amazing thing is that I love to cook.  True, I do still like to go out or order in sometimes (who doesn't) and working retail sometimes takes my drive to cook away from me, but generally I love it.  My favorite food has always been pasta and now I love making all kinds of homemade dishes with pasta as the main ingredient.  My favorite meal is Chicken Parmesan, but I have never made it myself satisfactorily.  I love to make soups and stews and I'm slowly getting past my fear of making potatoes.  I also love to make Asian food, so I make a lot of stir-frys and other Asian-inspired dishes.  Recently, I've started experimenting with making veggie mixes and then freezing them to use in different dishes.  I like it because I can leave out the ones I don't like then use the mix to put into dishes or have as a side with lunch or dinner.

I do still like the processed foods of my childhood every so often like Pasta-Roni or Hamburger Helper or Uncle Ben's rice.  And I think that's okay.  I don't wish that I had never had those foods in childhood, I just wish I'd had homemade things too.  I wish that my mother could love food instead of forcing herself to eat every once in-a-while and then sometimes "indulging" in her favorite chicken masala, only to feel guilty later.  In this culture, it is not good to like things that you do everyday.  If you like to eat or sleep, it is a moral failing.  But we do these things EVERY DAY, wouldn't we all be a lot happier if we liked it?

Have a great weekend!
~Mrs. Sprat