soul food
November 26, 2014 § 4 Comments
I am not a cook, I am barely a baker. At my best, I am attentive to directions and curious. The never ending task of coordinating healthy meals that are a pleasant balance of familiar and unanticipated has made me an exhausted, under-inspired family cook. Excuses and invitations interrupt the tediousness of my children’s predictably plain palates with an opportunity to peruse the pages of my oft-overlooked recipes for an idea. Slowly the search becomes an extension of a backyard treasure hunt, the entire process an enthusiastic quest for a new experience.
This is the playful path that lead me to shuffle the expectations for our Thanksgiving meal. Without the company of family our meal is a collection of unexceptional staples, a menu dictated by memories that is more reassuring than creative. Not wanting to challenge the harmony of the day with disruptive substitutions, I instead conceded my place at the helm of preparations. This year my children gathered the groceries and their hands will soon craft the meal. We will play with our food before we eat and maybe, perhaps, we will carve new traditions.
While my children stand taller in their tasks, I am counting my good fortune as their mother. The menu matters so much less than the company of my children. Our time together, food for my soul.
scribblechic 
Enjoy…
Thanks, Baz!
I hope your time together resulted in warm memories and a bit more strengthening of that ethereal glue that binds families.
Thank you, Maurice. It was a lovely holiday. We cluttered the kitchen with joy, cooking and dancing in equal measure the day before. Thanksgiving morning I dusted off the enthusiasm to unshelf unused wedding gifts so that my daughter could dress-up our dinner table; embracing the excuse to indulge her fascination with those off-limit breakables normally dismissed as inconvenient. Adding to our good fortune, we ended the evening with new friends who were fated to become old friends.
My blessings were many and my lesson was this: Sometimes letting go of old routines gives us the freedom to grasp new traditions.