Food is an important thing for us.
I’ve seen others get food delivered to them or made by other professionals out there, and I’ve heard of packets of food which come pre-mixed and ready to prepare in only a couple of minutes. In my family, however, we always made our own food. It was born out of necessity. When it was just me and my siblings in the house, we had to make whatever we could out of the food in the house. It started with just boiling pasta and cooking it with spices and sauces from the cupboards. When we ate it, we definitely had trouble keeping it down. We used sugar instead of salt, we let the pasta boil for much too long, and we didn’t do anything to balance the flavors. However, I couldn’t stop myself from still eating it. Something about making my own food made it taste better. If anything, the mixed bag of flavor left something memorable and unique about the experience.
We got better, obviously. When my father came home to the mess in the kitchen he knew he had to actually teach us how to cook properly. He let me know where things were in the house and what I could make quickly when alone. Meanwhile, he had my sister cutting up vegetables and my brother learning about different spices. Something about us all in the kitchen made the house feel more alive, even Nebbie was running around trying to help us out. I was a little confused with everything going on, but I just focused on putting the things I was given where they were supposed to go.
We finished a simple vegetable stir fry and all sat down together to eat. Of course, it wasn’t perfect. The bell peppers were charred because they were incorrectly cooked first, and the carrots were all cut unevenly because it was the first thing my sister tried to cut. Even so, we all kept going on and on about how delicious it was. Like I said, there’s something beautiful about imperfection that makes something memorable and exciting. We each cleaned off our plates, satisfied with full stomachs.
Nothing I’d ever make would be that amazing. Sure, we learned to cut vegetables faster and evenly. Sure, we learned how long to cook things without setting them on fire. Sure, we learned how much of each spice to add to make each of the dishes we knew. But nothing would match that feeling of sitting together with my family, eating a dish we all made together. Even as my brother began to perfect the art of cooking, getting better and better at an alarming rate. He began cooking each meal for the family, eventually becoming even better than my father. My sister never abandoned that skill, but my brother refused to stop improving and become content with his cooking prowess. He cooked almost every meal for the family from breakfast till dinner, filling the house with new smells every day as he perfected his craft. But still, nothing would compare to that first meal we made together.
Once father was gone, the kitchen lights didn’t go on for a while. My brother refused to cook for us anymore, and even when there was food he took it to his room because he didn’t want to sit at a table with an empty chair. Some nights, my sister didn’t come to eat either. It was just me, alone at the table with a mash of vegetables and some various herbs and spices there to make it palatable. The silence of the table made each bite feel like a strained effort, like the oppressive quiet was forcing food into my mouth that I didn’t want to eat. Eventually, I didn’t come to the table. I stopped eating, at least until I got too hungry and ate some plain pasta slathered in jarred sauce to stop my stomach from rumbling.
Things eventually went back to normal. Well, not exactly. Nothing was ever the same after we lost our father. My brother grew distant, and only cooked some of the time. Mostly, it was me and my sister making the food. At some point, someone took father’s chair from the table and hid it away somewhere. It made it easier to sit at a full table, but there was still something missing. Conversations grew stale with only us, and there were often pauses where we all ate silently before someone brought up a topic.
I quickly learned that it wasn’t the dish that made that first meal so memorable. It was the company. Everyone comes together to make something, each of our unique voices making it into the end result.
And with someone gone, we could never make another dish like that.