The dining room table was the life force of our family growing up.  I witnessed from a very young age that food has the potential to transcend time and circumstance.  There were moments where it seemed like a euphoric spell had been put on me as I dipped my fork into my plate repeatedly until there was nothing left. And I wasn’t the only one -–it was the only time of day there was silence in our house.  It was around that point I began to understand what it means to cook “well”.  Throughout the years at that dining room table I’ve experienced food so delicious and so filled with love and truth that it could bring you to tears.

Cooking well is in your bones, something you are born with.  A true cook (in this case my mother, aunts, and grandmothers) has a sixth sense when it comes to food:  the stick-to-your-bones meat stew she had waiting for us on bitter cold days, and the bubbling holy gravy (you might say red sauce) that seduced my nose when I woke up on Sunday mornings, or the intoxicating smell of a roast in the oven always seemed to be exactly what I needed right then.  Even her simplest dishes, like potatoes and eggs, were game changers.  I remember going to sleepovers and eating waffles for breakfast at a friend’s house and it was never the same as when my mother prepared them for us.  Even the way she smeared the butter had a signature to it.  Cooking is an art form to the women in my life. They were creating so much more than dinner in the kitchen; they were designing lifelong bonds and memories with ingredients that they respected and prepared with loving kindness as an extension of their unconditional love for us.  It seemed like it was a secret power coded into their DNA, a magical culmination of the thousands of years of cooks that came before them.

Cooking well means taking on the role of caregiver, therapist, parent, mind reader, friend, and a big soft blanket all in one. To cook well is to give those around you something they could count on, something to look forward to --to provide a constant in their lives in a world where nothing is certain.