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Food Eaten as it Should Be; With Love

My life through macaroni and cheese.

By Jennifer BlackPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Food Eaten as it Should Be; With Love
Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash

Food and I have a complex history.

I didn’t like most foods as a child. I mean sure, kids are picky, but I had unaddressed sensory issues making most food textures hell for me. While I learned as an adult how to cook for my own needs, I spent most of my youth struggling to eat home-cooked food. For those first 18 years, I feel like I lived largely off of premade meals and fast food that had their textures and flavours processed away to nothing. This made food contentious in my family, and gave me an altogether unhealthy attitude towards eating.

I would binge often. When I found something I could eat without issue, I made sure to eat it. Food was a struggle, but it was also a comfort. I inherently like food; not only in the sense that food nourishes the body, but in the sense that food nourishes the psyche. Eating good food makes me happy, even if it’s a struggle to find new foods that I can enjoy without discomfort or sensory pain.

Through all of this struggling, I had my safe foods, and no food was safer than macaroni and cheese. It was easy to make, easy to eat, and tasty even to a child’s palate. I still remember the joys of filling a large bowl with an entire box of Kraft mac and cheese. There were days when I lived off of microwavable macaroni cups. Nowadays I get my cheese needs fulfilled by making the dish from scratch, usually with broccoli, but it’s still the same song and dance. It is one-hundred-percent comfort and ease.

I have so many memories associated with macaroni and cheese. There was the first time I cooked it from scratch with my now-husband, making a roux, a bechamel, and finally a mornay sauce for my pasta. I remember getting mad at that same husband, because he would always quote an online cooking channel’s chef on the best way to make a bechamel while I was standing there actually cooking it. I have the fond memories of adding new experimental toppings with great success. I have the less fond memory of adding broccoli that was a little past its prime to the dish, and regretting it.

Going back a bit into my mind, there are even more poignant memories. When I was a child, I had a cat that did not like me. We’d grown up together, which meant she had experienced me as a rude and pushy kid. Then she got sick, and I suppose she knew her time was near, so she started to seek comfort where she could find it. She found it at my now-teenaged side, and we found a new appreciation for each other in her final days.

Of course, when cats are dying, they stop eating. I also knew that when cats stop eating, they die. So when my now-beloved Zoe stopped eating her cat food, what did I feed her out of my own bowl? Macaroni and cheese. Those shared spoonfuls were her final meals. She spent so much of her life avoiding people, trying to hide from loud children, and I hope that those final bites tasted sweeter with the knowledge that she was no longer alone.

I wish that my relationship with food was healthier. I wish my history wasn’t pock-marked with failed diets and successful bingeing, with shame, with disgust, with fear. But between those scars are the times that food was eaten as it should be; with love.

I hope I can move forward more thoroughly with a love for food. I hope that if my children have the same issues as me, that I can guide them through the experience of finding food that works. I hope that food fills them with the feelings of togetherness and joy, and I hope that it stays like that for me as well.

If not, there will always be macaroni and cheese.

humanity
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About the Creator

Jennifer Black

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