Keeping It in the Family

Types of food in a family

“We always eat dinner together in our family!”

“The only time we ate together was on Shabbos. Everyone was too busy during the rest of the week.”

“My mother is absolutely the best cook in the world!”

These and other food-related statements are commonly interspersed in descriptions of how many of us grew up. Each family is by its nature unique, special within its own individual unit, and is clearly influenced by the people who lovingly build the family and the home. For this reason, the foods that feature in every family are often unique to that family.

Some families eat only home-made food, other rely on fast-food outlets and catering. Some families lean towards the healthier products and yet others, only 'grow their own' raw ingredients!

All types of food that we were exposed to, are bound to our memories of growing up. Unfortunately, with many nowadays still living below the poverty line, there are still people whose memories of food in their childhood will be those of scarcity.

Enjoy a stroll through this website. Food memories are about much more than nostalgia. Food memories use the past to build the future!

Why do we eat?

One one level we eat to stay alive. The body needs the physical food blocks, and we miraculously digest food items, until the tiny particles flow into the blood system and give us energy, building blocks and so on. The digestion process for food mirrors the digestion process for life events. This means that things we experience need to be digested in a healthy manner and get broken down in an efficient and safe way until they too can flow into our life energy. Thus we see that life events can give us strength to go on in life and grow in other ways, not just physically.

Fond memories

The people will connect meals to favorite cooks-personalities in their family, such as mother, grandmothers and fathers and grandfathers. Some will connect meals to special events such as welcome home parties for family members away for an extensive period of time. Of course some foods will with their very identity be the memory jogger. Some examples of this will be the donuts eaten at Chanukah gatherings, or that favorite Shavuot cheesecake. Food memories are actually a way of connecting to feelings and deeper memeories.

Connection to family values

Foods in a family may give an invaluable part in the forming and keeping of family ties. Now more than ever, as they mature, people travel away from the place where they grew up, and sometimes they travel away from the values a family upheld all those years. Foods seem to play a powerful and invisible role in binding a person to the way they were brought up and many times to their parents and the people they grew up with.

Retain family bond

Cousins from across the ocean can enjoy a long-distance discussion revolving around meals or food that was common in their family a generation prior. Thus we see that food can help to retain a pleasant familial bond.

Comfort food

Of course the comfort foods we ate as children, will always play a great part in our lives. Usually these were simple, inexpensive things that we ate perhaps as we recovered from a childhood illness, or the foods we ate on those days when due to weather conditions it was impossible to leave the house.

The food that we eat (and that we give our children) builds our bodies and shapes our lives. Go on, add a lot of love into your culinary creations. You’ll never imagine how far it will go!