The taste of love

There are times I like a simple supper. Particularly through the week. On the weekends I splurge more and through the week I like to simplify things. I have a few favourite meals that I go to when I want a simple supper.

The first is spaghetti noodles tossed with parmesan and butter and sometimes a little garlic. I like the dried noodles from the box for this meal, no fancy fresh pasta. I want it like I remember having it at sixteen when my brother in law Dick taught me to make it. As in all his recipes the butter is the key. Plenty of it. 

Another butter loaded supper is plain boiled new potatoes. No peas, no carrots, no hodge podge. Just the simple taste of freshly dug potatoes with a bit of salt and butter. This tastes like July to me. And it is all I need and sometimes it is my perfect supper.

My winter version of this is a bit fancier. I make a salad of just lettuce with a dressing of olive oil, lemon and garlic and toss it. I serve this with oven fries that I make by tossing slices of potatoes with olive oil and baking them at 450 degrees for twenty minutes. I serve the salad and fries together with Hellmans Mayonnaise and I am happy. The best drink with all of these is a cold glass of ice water.

And it's not all starch with me, even though I am open to suppers of toast and tea. Some nights I just want a big salad with whatever I have on hand. I just want fresh and crunchy and a homemade dressing. 

There are nights that cooking and preparing are not in the cards. There are nights you just want to cozy up with a bowl of comfort. I let myself do this sometimes. I purposely let the groceries run down in the fridge so we use everything we have. I like the feeling of resourcefulness that it brings out in me. I don't like to throw things away. I am always amazed what you can do if you still have eggs, potatoes, onions, a bit of cheese, and some pasta. You can always manage to make a meal out of it. Then if you go to the pantry and find a can of tuna or that year old can of marinated artichokes then you're talkin'. The options expand.

I grew up in a house of fish, meat and potatoes and delicious home made spaghetti on Saturdays. The only thing I knew about spinach was Popeye. Our corn on the cob came in a can. Food was simple and basic. I never tasted a cucumber til I was ten. I never had a fresh strawberry until I was fifteen. We lived on root vegetables. Once or twice a summer the local store would bring in a whole watermelon and cut it up and sell it by the piece. I loved those summer days. I remember when my sister brought home a cucumber from the mainland I found it in the bottom of the fridge and ate the whole thing. When she looked for it I told her I ate it all because it tasted like watermelon. She was surprised but she understood. 

And so I think I sometimes crave that simplicity in food because it brings me comfort. I am fortunate in that I have never been truly hungry. There has always been good food around me. And I appreciate this so much. I wake up each day looking forward to my meals. Grateful that there is a pound of fish in the freezer and a stocked pantry. I find that taking weeks where I really simplify and use what I have makes me more grateful. It helps me see the good in every ingredient. It gets me imagining. What can I do with three potatoes, a can of tomatoes, and some capers. My sister, whose cucumber I ate, sometimes takes three ingredients and asks google what she could make with them when she lets the groceries run low. I have tried this too. 

And letting yourself get low is very different than the experience of not being able to buy groceries to feed your family. I know this, and it is why I am grateful. It is why I like to practice this sort of simplicity. It helps me stay close to the source of things, to my own roots, and to my own need to be grateful for each ingredient. It teaches me not to waste, to make the best of things, to do the best with what you have. 

One of my fondest memories in my mother's kitchen was eating her brown sugar pudding. It was a simple cake in a brown sugar sauce. I would still prefer this to tiramisu in a five star restaurant because it is the food that love made. When I was a child as a very special treat my mother would let me have a bowl of macaroni with Ever-sweet margarine. We only got butter once a year when it was made fresh on the Cape Shore. On top of that macaroni she would crush up a handful of potato chips. It's no wonder I sometimes love a bowl of pasta. It is the taste of love.

And so sometimes I go back to simplicity because in a way I going back to love, to the way my mother fed me, the way I grew up, and to the simple basics of food that surrounded me as a child. And yes after I do this for a bit I will crave a cucumber, or a shrimp taco or a fancy dinner out somewhere. And luckily enough I am able to have these things too. Knowing you are lucky makes everything taste better.