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.

  A perfect day. A perfect day for me is a day by the water—Ocean, lake, creek, river, stream. I like the water. I go to the beach a lot. My family and I pack up lots of food and sand toys and head out. I love the sun and sand. I think if I could I would walk around in a swimsuit and flip-flops all day and be on the beach. Which is something you probably would not think to hear from someone with a history of having an eating disorder.  I never hated my body. I really love the way I look. Having an eating disorder was never about making me skinnier. It was about control and finding a way to deal with my anxiety. A very unhealthy way to deal with it.  When I was dealing with anorexia I actually disliked my body a lot. I hated how I could see my bones through my skin and how my favorite parts of my body were gone. I am very proud of the work I put into my body and what I worked so hard on was gone.  Because of how much I hated my beyond-skinny body, I love my current bo...

I fucking love salads. But not like a weak healthy salad. Like salad with chicken and lots of dressing. I am very particular about my salads. Like I said before, cooking is therapeutic. And making salads is a very familiar, repetitive process. It helps with the control. I like the process of washing the vegetables, drying them (cause we all know that everything needs to be dry otherwise the dressing does not stay on the veggies), cutting them, and seasoning them.  People always think salads need to be healthy. Salads can be really good and filling. I like to pair salads with pasta or pizza as a fresh crunch to my meal. If I am going to just eat a salad, I will make a Caesar salad with chicken or shrimp and then garlic bread on the side. I don’t think salad should just be vegetables. It needs something substantial. It needs some sort of carbs or protein (even vegan proteins) to really fill you up.  One of my favorite salads to make is a cucumber and tomato salad. I cut up an en...

  You could not pay me not to eat carbs. Carbs are a girl’s best friend, not diamonds. Bread, pasta, pizza, all amazing.  Two winter breaks ago, my nieces stayed over for a week. And I love my nieces, but trying to please an 8 and 3-year-old is hard especially when they are picky eaters. One thing they always love is pizza. And store-bought box pizza isn’t bad. They like it and it's editable. I like pizza. Most people like pizza. But box pizza is nothing like homemade pizza. On this random Friday in December, my sisters were at work and my parents were out. It was just me and my nieces. So we made pizza from scratch. I thought it would be a great experience for them to cook a little bit and feel like they had a part in making dinner.  Don't get me wrong, it was fun. They loved it. But giving up that control and letting them do things was hard. I know I could have made dinner 10x faster than they did, but I wanted to spend time with them.  They had a lot of fun making...