By Margaret Miller
Last night I made a Thai red curry for dinner. I didn’t follow a recipe, mixing ingredients I knew went well together, including coconut milk, sliced peppers for colour and crunch and chicken. It made a great meal, a bowl of delicious, nutritious food.
Like others in my family, I enjoy good food and make most meals from scratch. Flavours and dishes from other cultures are appealing, and I’m thankful Creston stores now offer a range of so-called international ingredients. Dinners in my home are always eaten at the table. TV off, phones stowed, placemats or tablecloth in place. Good food deserves to be well presented.
I grew up in Australia and, like others of my generation, most meals I ate were prepared from scratch by my mother, a busy housewife and mother of six. Buying and preparing food for a family of eight occupied much of her time and I recall a handwritten list of dinner ideas taped inside the pantry to avoid the “what to make this week?” dilemma.
Like mothers of the ’60s whose grandparents came from England, Mum generally served a meat or fish dish with vegetables. Sometimes pasta, occasionally a rice dish. Cold meat and salad sometimes replaced warm dishes during the summer months. Dessert always followed the main course. Australia produces a wide selection of fruits, so an easy summertime dessert might have been watermelon slices (taken outside for seed-spitting contests), ripe bananas (mashed with a sprinkle of sugar) or a juice laden mango.
My big family loved Mum’s cooking and it was rare for food to be left on our plates. Roast leg of lamb with four veggies, mint sauce and lashings of gravy – generally served on a Saturday evening – was one of her most loved dishes.
These days, I occasionally prepare baked lamb for a special occasion at-home dinner. It’s always a tablecloth affair. A time to recall noisy family dinners that took place decades ago on another continent. Certain foods evoke strong memories of my youth.
The power of food to build community was obvious during my years teaching at the Creston Alternate Program in the ’90s. In those days, this School District program was housed a few blocks east of the high school, three staff supporting twelve teens with social, emotional or behavioural challenges.
The hot lunch program was an important ingredient in the success of this school program. Guided by childcare worker Dave, each student planned and prepared a week of lunches for students and staff. Complaints about the menu choices were rare as we began each term with a “What should we have for lunches?” discussion. Meals needed to be affordable, nutritious, not time consuming to prepare and liked by all. This strategy worked well and together we compiled a list of appealing, healthy meals.
I enjoyed these student-prepared lunches and happily dined each day with fourteen others. It was an opportunity to plan activities, thank the cook, tease those who were having a good day and nourish those who weren’t. I quickly learned to postpone disciplinary chats until after we’d eaten. A full belly can help calm a troubled teen!
Recently, I was invited to lunch in the home of friends – an Eritrean couple who moved to Creston from Sudan last fall with their children. They served an Arabic meal: salona adas (a spiced lentil dish), a lemony four-ingredient salad and fresh flatbread. I watched the wife make the bread before we ate, mixing flour, salt and a generous amount of water by hand to spread across a hot frying pan. The three of us ate around a small table, scooping up the adas with strips of warm bread while we talked about the arrival of spring in Canada and seasonal changes in Sudan.
Food certainly nourishes the body but it also provides comfort by connecting us to culture and memory. The aroma and flavour of roast lamb or a ripe mango remind me of Australia. For others among us, it may be a dish from India or Myanmar, from Guatemala or Eritrea that stirs memories.
Eating well matters to our health. So too does access to familiar and favourite foods as they nourish much more than our bodies.