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My 2015 food resolution

For the last week, I have watched my Facebook feed blow up with people’s New Year’s resolutions. I found myself laughing – this was more like a list of things I would NOT be doing in 2015.

Girl 1: “I am going to run two miles every day!”

Me: “I am only running if there is a fire. Or a 75 percent off sale on shoes. Or a bear attacking.”

I think resolutions are over rated. Why must I make a commitment on January 1st to change something about myself? Maybe I think I am doing okay and I do not need some holiday to tell me I must make life changes. But then I came across one I could get on board with: “I am going to sit down and eat at least one homemade meal a week with my family.”

Now that I want to do.

I am a single, full-time working Mom. The reality of that situation is that sometimes, we have had a bowl of cereal for dinner. And if we are going to be completely honest, I am no Paula Deen. I have mastered a few dishes, but nothing really fancy. That is what I am going to do – I am going to expand my culinary abilities, and make at least one home-cooked meal and sit down with my son. Not eat over the sink while I read essays that I am trying to grade. Food is not simply nourishment, food is family.

I think we all have a complicated relationship with food. When I was growing up, it was very easy to tell when my Mom was stressed out – she was making fudge. Naturally, when I am stressed, I tend to do the same thing. It’s familial therapy.

The idea of food equaling family really dawned on me while talking to my friend Travis about dreams and goals – how important it is to have some focus in life, something to work toward. This conversation materialized as he was making dinner. While pots bubbled and boiled, and I was tasked with stirring a rue (which is probably the best use of my kitchen talents, and he is quite frankly very lucky I did not burn it or start the pot on fire), I got lost in the thought of how a genuinely home cooked meal is like a family – my family.

Here is a vast array of various different ingredients – that alone, are not nearly as hearty and rich without their counterparts. I don’t really want to eat diced onions alone, but throw them into a soup pot with chicken and noodles, carrots, good chicken stock, and some various spices well, that is like one of my all-time favorite things. But alone, diced onions do not do the trick.

In my family, we are all incredibly different, but also, so similar. My sister and I are not huge cooks. But once, we set our minds to making Thanksgiving dinner for our parents, our own families, and her in-laws. Only after a few minor setbacks (including my sister not having any flour in her house which I will not let her live down) and forgetting a vegetable to go with dinner, we concocted a pretty decent meal. But my sister who is almost my polar opposite, and I, came together to make this meal for our family. Do you know why it wound up being so good? Because we loved those that we were cooking for. We together, two very different “ingredients,” mixed together, made something awesome.

So now, as I stand in front of my stove and make a huge pot of Jambalaya, something definitely out of my comfort zone, my side-kick standing on a chair next to me explaining his reasoning as to why he will not eat this (“Shrimp are ig-sgusting!”), we will soon sit down at our dining room table and talk about our day and enjoy Mom’s warm homemade dish on a cold winter’s eve. In the words of Sophia Loren, “The most indispensable ingredient of all good home cooking: love for those you are cooking for.” I have that in heaps. I may not have the kitchen skills to pay the bills, but I can manage.

From our kitchen to yours – we wish you a wonderful and blissful 2015. Whether your goal is to lose weight, or work out more, or spend more time with your family, or save up for that food truck business you have been wanting to launch may this be your year! For the record, no one was injured in my kitchen and I have started only two microwaves on fire and my oven once.) And if you are wondering, yes, my son ate the Jambalaya – and loved it.

Editor’s note: Heather French teaches English at Lake Linden MS/HS.

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