If you've ever visited one of my food websites, you might have been impressed with pretty pictures of delicious-sounding recipes. These are not the recipes I remember from my childhood.
I didn’t learn to cook from my mother. She pulled together meals with the most limited budget imaginable. Charity food boxes were a highlight of my childhood. The gift of food is something I will never take for granted.
I remember watching my mother cry over a gift of groceries. I recall being speechless with joy over a huge bag of day-old doughnuts, because I couldn't recall having a doughnut before that day.
The doughnuts were part of a food box that my mother stood in line for every Tuesday afternoon. She would bring them home and sort them. She set aside the doughnuts that were still whole on a plate to be a special dessert that night. The smashed doughnuts were then chopped up and allowed to dry out overnight. The next day she made them into "doughnut pudding," a simple bread pudding without added sugar.
We ate beans and rice with a side of jello more often than any other meal. There’s a story of how my mom once fed my older siblings for a week using just a nickel bag of onions; boiled, mashed, baked, sautéed. (I’m not at all sad that I wasn’t yet born to enjoy that deliciousness.)
I learned to be grateful for every single thing in my life. Though I grew up poor, I was richly blessed and I never went to bed hungry. My mother could take the simplest things and make them special. She taught me that finding joy in the small pleasures of life is far more fun than always looking toward the next big thing.
There may never be anything more beautiful to me than a full pantry. The monotony of grocery shopping as an adult is countered by the overwhelming gratitude that I am able to go to the store and purchase what we need every week.
I don't take for granted the fact that we don't have to weigh the cost of new shoes against whether or not we'll be able to purchase our food.
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