Food, a complicated subject

  My grandma grew up in Poland and moved here in high school. She tells me stories about growing up in rural Poland during the World Wars. She tells me horror stories about the Holocaust and how her relatives were prisoners. She tells me about how food was scarce and had to be stretch thin. They didn’t have certain fruits and veggies. They got oranges as Christmas presents because they were expensive and seen as a luxury. She had never seen a pineapple till she moved to the US. I think a lot of people do not realize how rare some foods were and still are in some countries. We are very privileged to live in a country with so much diversity and opportunity to have food. Food is a huge part of my life, especially Polish food. My grandma always makes big portions of food and is always making sure we are not hungry. She grew up with almost nothing, so she tries to give us everything. Her love language is food. She shows us she cares through food. I love going to her house and making Pol...

Cookies fix everything. Some of my best memories surround cookies. I feel like cookies and just desserts in general get a bad rap. In moderation, sugar is fine. You are allowed to have a cookie. You are allowed to treat yourself. I think people forget that a lot. Growing up I was at my grandparents' house a lot. Every night after dinner I was allowed a cookie or ice cream. This is moderation. I remember sitting in the old recliner with a Jewel Osco chocolate chip cookie watching Sprout and listening to Nina and Star wish us a good night. My days always ended the same. I liked the control and routine. We also make lots of Christmas cookies. We spend all day just baking loads of different cookies. And then we give them out to our friends and family. It brings people together. I have been baking with my aunts, mom, and grandma for as long as I can remember. Every year we do the same routine. When me and my cousin were little we actually got into the caramel while it was still at room ...

  I go through phases where I love a certain food. I crave it almost every day and I know it will be easy to eat and that I will like it. This can last for weeks or months. And then one day I just stopped craving it. I go to eat it and it’s just okay. It is no longer this amazing meal. It is just food again. This happened to me with bagels. I was obsessed with bagels last semester. It was my go-to thing to eat if I was hungry and did not know what to make. It was easy and I knew that it would satisfy any cravings or hunger. I currently have bagels that are sitting in my fridge and when I think about eating them it is not as satisfying anymore. They’re just bagels now. I can feel a new food obsession coming into my life currently. Right now whenever I feel a food craving it is usually for something sweet. My go-to is Nutella toast with sliced banana. It’s easy and it satisfies my cravings.  I feel like I am constantly going through comfort foods and losing a comfort food can be...

Like I’ve said before, I love cooking and I have trouble sharing control during cooking. Over the summer, my two friends and I decided to cook dinner in my apartment. We each got a course to make. One of my friends was in charge of appetizers, the other was in charge of the main, and I was in charge of the dessert. We were all squeezed into my small kitchen, sharing the limited pots and pans I had. We were washing dishes in between and falling over each other. It was chaos. A good chaos.  My one friend was cooking the main in a cast iron skillet and making a lot of smoke/steam. My other friend and I were making jokes that he was burning it and was going to set off the smoke alarms. He did in fact set off the smoke alarms. We were all laughing and opening windows and teasing him as he fanned the smoke down the hall. Causing more smoke alarms to go off. The food was good. The laughs were better. It is memories like these to why I like food. It brings us together.