Your earliest memory of food
Just a few more years before they’ll be smothering it on toast and taking a picture of it
What’s your earliest memories of food + eating?
Mine are these:
Hating breakfast. I would drag out the process of eating breakfast for what felt like hours. I don’t remember why I hated eating breakfast, but I feel like there were definitely battles + yelling about it nearly every morning. I also hated drinking milk but was required to have one cup every morning. My great-grandma used to tempt me by putting a single M&M at the bottom of the glass. I remember watching the milk slowly begin to swirl with color as I slooooowwwwly drank it down.
Our garden in the backyard. It was something the whole family was into, if I remember correctly. I loved going out every day to see the little strawberries (how come they never got as big as the ones in the market?) and water the cucumbers, while keeping a safe distance from the tomatoes. We grew stuff that my mom would cut up and put in our side salads at dinner. I remember around that time realizing that, in fact, it’s people who grow the food we eat.
Family dinners. Grilled Italian sausage and spaghetti, stir fry—which we called Wok and I now realize is actually the type of pan that you make a stir fry in, not the dish itself—salmon and broccoli and white rice. Fruit and dessert always.
Growing up culturally Jewish meant that I went to Sunday school and also Hebrew school, which was every Wednesday starting in middle school to prepare us for our bat and bar mitzvahs. It was after school, and dinner was a part of the program, usually pizza but sometimes more of a buffet style where temple volunteers served the kids. One of the volunteers had survived the Holocaust as a child. He used to give every kid an extra scoop or slice of whatever was being served. I don’t remember if we ever talked about it as a class or as a family, but I remember just knowing that he did this because of his scarcity mindset from his trauma. As a 13 year old the thought in my head was probably more like: “He always will give extra food because he didn’t have enough when he was in a concentration camp.” But the sentiment was the same.
Jewish culture, like many cultures, seems to center around food and eating, and I think that the legacy of the Holocaust adds a layer of complexity. It’s not good to not have enough to eat, it’s good to have abundance. But I think that modern American diet culture seeped in somewhere generationally, and another layer of complexity got added. It’s good to have abundance, but also really good to be thin + pretty.
The most illustrative example I have of this is the phrase “kein ayin hara.” It’s a Yiddish expression that translates to “no evil eye” and means something similar to “knock on wood.” In my family it sounds like “cunna-HUHrah,” which is fun to say.
Growing up, cunna-hurrah was said after someone would eat a big meal, or finish their plates, or ask for seconds. I think the original purpose behind saying cunna-hurrah was meant express “Wow, you are so healthy and strong, you have a good appetite, knock on wood.” But I remember feeling embarrassed or ashamed if someone said it to me. I’d take it to mean “Oh wow, you eat a lot” and eating a lot wasn’t a good thing. I don’t remember how I’d respond or what I’d do with those feelings of embarrassment.
We don’t remember eating our first ever foods as babies, but it’s an event that parents do remember and document heavily. My mom tells a funny story of giving my sister peaches for the first time and how her whole baby body shuddered in delight. We’ve all seen funny memes of babies eating lemons and screwing up their faces in the wake of unfamiliar sensations.
These early eating moments are ones of delight, extreme cuteness, and positivity. We like to see babies eat zestfully, try new things, get fat, and grow bigger everyday. Wouldn’t it be nice to remember eating as a baby, having people cheer you on and then wipe your face for you?
