A series of essays....
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| YOU ARE RESTOCKING YOUR PANTRY, TAKING CONTROL OF YOUR HEALTH... ISN’T IT ABOUT TIME TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR DATA...REBOOT YOUR LIFE? |
....as seen through my eyes!
By: Jacqueline E Hughes
One of the greatest gifts you can give to someone is to cook for them.
I love to cook. I love to cook and bake for family, friends, special occasions, or a dinner for two. I’ve felt it has always been my way of showing love and affection towards others.
Considering that we eat to live rather than live to eat, what better way to say, “I love you,” than to prepare meals for others to let them know that it’s nice to have them by our side and we want them to be there for as long as possible. The strong ties between an Italian Madre and her children, especially her sons, has been uniquely based upon the abundance of good food placed before the family at mealtimes. She consistently brings them all together at the family table to share her love for them while they return it by partaking in her grand feasts.
The recipes used are universal and yet fairly simple consisting of mounds of sustenance, filled with pinches of fresh flavors, a time rendered homage to ancestry and culture, swirls of affection, and an ultimate presentation and plating that is guaranteed to humble even the most stubborn child in all of us.
My Ukrainian Grandmother’s heart and soul survived through the knowledge that she always had enough food at any given time to treat even a stranger with her wholesome hospitality. If you were to bring a friend to visit, Grandma would have suggested it was a national holiday, created a spread of deliciousness on the long kitchen table, enough to feed the royal family, and you would ultimately leave the house with handwritten recipes stuffed into your jacket pocket.
These genuine and generous acts of pure love have served mankind well since the beginning of time. Since isolation has prompted the return of choosing our meal ingredients wisely and affectively feeding one or two people, up to families of four, six, and more, while having the time allotted to enjoy the process and art form of cooking, we are all becoming chefs in our own right. Baking delicious crusty bread, fruit pies with homemade crust, or apple cake from scratch has become a much appreciated luxury based on newly found energy and time.
Hidden talents have emerged out of sheer necessity as many of us have become family barbers and beauticians. And, doing a fantastic job of it, too, I might add! Suddenly, the retiree gardener we longed to become while daydreaming at our 9 to 5 job has become a reality. Having the time has allowed some of us to go full speed ahead and create hydroponic vegetable gardens on our back decks and multi-tiered herb gardens clinging to the exterior walls of the house all while observing the growth of peony, hydrangea, and lavender patches along the periphery of the backyard.
We’re becoming obsessive yet productive and valuable human beings, contributing to the basic welfare of those we love, as well as our own personal wellbeing. If I had to venture a guess, I actually believe we’ve begun to care once again. Having more time for ourselves and those around us is opening up a whole new world for so many; a world designed upon the basic acts of love and kindness shared by our ancestors, pioneers of a brand new world, who knew a thing or two about survival.
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| IT SEEMS WE’VE ACTUALLY BEGUN TO ‘CARE’ ONCE AGAIN |
If we put it in more modern terms and references, I would say we are ‘rebooting’ ourselves; giving fresh impetus to lifestyles that had grown seemingly robotic or stagnant. The onslaught of COVID-19 and having to isolate ourselves has been like bringing back an early black and white movie but studding it with a new cast and an updated script.
We’ve been afforded an opportunity of incorporating a fresh, new, more stimulating and active, loving and giving lifestyle into our daily existence simply by turning-off the computer system inside of us for an indefinite (hopefully short) period of time and then turning it back on again. We’ve been given a restart and a new chance at becoming a better, updated, and more generous person. Having time to rethink our raison d’être by asking ourselves what it is that makes us happy and whole, finding new answers to old problems with new questions, and flavoring our changing world with an array of colorful spices, our unexpected reboot could just be the ‘Golden Ticket’ we’ve been searching for.
The rebooting of society, especially under the uncertain terms and rules of being governed by a virus that has no set boundaries and has been a very deadly pill to swallow, I believe, is meant to help us change our ways, rethink our old lives based on improvement, and guide us into a brighter, intelligent, and less selfish tomorrow.
The rebooting of society, especially under the uncertain terms and rules of being governed by a virus that has no set boundaries and has been a very deadly pill to swallow, I believe, is meant to help us change our ways, rethink our old lives based on improvement, and guide us into a brighter, intelligent, and less selfish tomorrow.
It’s about time and long overdue.
One day soon, I would like nothing more than to receive a very good explanation for what many of us have had to endure these past three and a half years, soon to be four, with this particular person in office. Unlike the endearing ways of our Italian Madre and my dear, sweet Grandmother, we have not had enough good food to feed our hungry appetites and fill us with the humble and wholesome hospitality uniquely offered by this great nation to her citizens and welcomed immigrants in the past.
It’s time once again and long overdue.
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| DAN’S FIRST ATTEMPT AT HOMEMADE FRENCH BAGUETTES |
We must continue baking that crusty bread and feeding our soul and spirit with the moral equivalence of health, love, and wellbeing. Our reboot shall be considered a blessing to all of us and an ultimate sacrifice made by many of us as new cases of coronavirus emerge and the death toll rises. Because we are not normally a nation of one-on-one, soon we will be blending back into the broader spectrum of society and activities. And, in the meantime, we are rebooting our own lives, under our own control, conditioning ourselves for the new life ahead of us.
Let’s enjoy what our new discoveries have to offer. It’s time to take control and bless the idea of being given a new beginning and a fresh start.
Embrace mindfulness. Stay healthy and safe. Always be kind to and understanding of others. The entire population of this planet is in this together!
Copyright © 2020 by Jacqueline E Hughes
All rights reserved
