Meals

My fridge often fails to offer successful meals.  Never mind that it only extends to me things I have put into it. I embrace an external entity to blame for mediocre meals I’ve offered of late.

 

The noun meal is defined as any of the regular occasions when a reasonably large amount of food is eaten, such as breakfast, lunch, or dinner or the food eaten on such an occasion.

 

My daughter attended a talk to volunteer with a group providing meals for the homeless.  The organization offers a magnanimous 4,500 meals a week on a budget of $2,000.  Her group will provide 260 persons one dinner.  These were the guidelines to the youth:  offer a protein, starch, vegetable, dessert.  Make it healthy.  And give from your heart.  Do not provide merely food but also love and compassion.  The homeless kitchen’s mission makes my lamenting feel like the squeaks of an ungrateful mouse living in a cheese factory.  On the other hand, listening to kids brainstorm ideas illustrated that they had no idea what it really takes to put together meals.

 

I am deeply grateful to have plentiful food.  I thankfully procure fresh, green stuff and avoid sugar and empty, processed carbs.  Healthy food and nutrition have been my hobby for years but somehow, regrettably, my sizzle fizzled.  I’ve lost the emotional satisfaction once mingled with making meals, perusing recipes, plotting perfect pairings.  I miss the joy it used to bring.  I don’t remember how to offer my heart alongside a lightly salted chicken breast and its steamed friend, broccoli. 

 

Meals can indeed serve self and caloric sustenance.  People gather at table to offer and receive.  Through emotional eating, baby nutrition, snacks and sippy cups, my meals evolved in phases both fulfilling and frustrating.  I now find myself squarely seated at the helm of family meals for five.   Sandwiched between work that I adore and kids’ activities they enjoy, volunteer commitments and household management, a reasonably large amount of food for breakfast, lunch, or dinner often feels like a distraction instead of a mission.  My mind voice is screaming, “You cannot be burned out.  This is important stuff!”   

 

I need recharging, maybe from a tradition honored as people sit to sup:  find gratitude.  (Even for cheese toast and sliced fruit for dinner?)  My knowledge about the science of food in the body won’t disappear.  But maybe I can release the “perfect meal” and lower the temperature on the pressure placed on meals.  Sounds delicious.  But like many delicious meals, rejuvenation might take more time than I want.

 

Leftovers

ho hum lunch munch meal fare

past time, prepared titanic pot

same yet today not so yummy

seated similar chummy bench

served hot, chewed, swallowed

simultaneously divided due

two big bowls sit after through

tastes changed as body slept

cells crept up, stirred to death

from the surface sloughed off

washed away, plate from goo

became new (unlike the food)

staid without change in hunger

eaten, want keeps growing alive