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Cherish the Miracle Whip

I’ve been trying to remember my experiences with food as a child, and trying to figure out how they helped shape who I am as an eco-focused chef and farmer today. They didn’t. 

The sad thing is, only a few memories stand out, the themes of which are very short lived as my childhood and adolescence is filled with constant change. Change of family, surroundings, location. Death, school, puberty.

I want to have a story that is solid, grounded, makes sense and echoes my feelings about food now. I wish I could tell you about learning to garden with my mom, or having backyard chickens as a toddler, and how being around animal death earl shaped me. I wish there was a photo of me holding a recently deceased chicken, a grin on my face, with only the amount of pride a child can feel about something they really had no part in. Maybe a feather or two plucked.  

But I can’t. I can tell you that overly cooked peas from a can with salted butter is still one of my favorite things. Maybe they were frozen peas? I can tell you that mixing two flavors of packaged ramen and adding cream is the ultimate way to indulge in a fifty-cent package of food.

My grandfather once brought home fish from the market that still needed to be scaled. The act of scraping a fish, sending its scales ricocheting into the air sent me into hysterics. On a separate occasion my father brought home fresh caught fish, still alive, still hanging from the wire that brought them to my father. They were black, Catfish? I think I remember whiskers. I insisted on putting them into the kiddie pool to try and keep them alive. So, they died in the pool.

When trying, over the last few weeks, to revive as many memories with food from my youth (whose current mind is as far from that place & time that three decades will allow) that I can, I have mostly recovered and stuck with food memories I feel some shame about. Why would I do this to myself? I love food and have many very fond memories. Am I ashamed of my suburban upbringing? I do most certainly feel shame about how I viewed food prior to seeking out further education in nutrition and culinary school, then farming, then more schooling. I don’t want to dwell on the ramen, cereal, candy, and tv dinners for too long, just enough to say, I wish I had known then what I know now. And fuck, who doesn’t love ramen. 

My grandparents early on tried to get me to eat cooked carrots and I refused, in my wise, young mind there was no need to cook carrots. Carrots were delicious and crunchy when raw. Dipped in things. Much like celery. Stubbornly, I gave in, I put one or two sliced pieces of warm, perfectly buttered, salted carrots in my mouth and literally swooned. Swooned as much as an eight-year-old can, hands clasped in joy, arms stretched as straight as they’d go, probably also some twirling and humming ‘mmmmmmmm’ with a full carrot mouth. They were delicious. They were sweet. The texture, soft, but still slightly firm. I loved them. And I had zero intention of letting my grandparents know I felt this way (despite the dead giveaway), that they were right, and I was proven wrong by the smug adults. So I shrugged and quietly ate them, enjoying every single bite. Then asked for more.

I can’t eat a charcoal grilled piece of steak without being transported back to my dad’s rooftop access in South Baltimore on a warm summer day. Salt, pepper, steak, charcoal. Buttered peas take me to my grandparent’s back yard. So does dill for that matter. The exact same reaction to cooked carrots is what I had with peas. Then, almost a decade later, cooked beets. A classic bistro salad, my mom and dad both had varying versions of this salad they’d make. My dad opting for sweet vidalia onions, and my mom choosing red. Always balsamic. 

These food memories that I don’t feel shame about bring me great pride. And I often recreate them in my meals. There are less emotionally important moments with food in my memory bank- when I realized I no longer really liked Miracle Whip (so much shame) and now preferred mayonnaise. A waldorf salad with Miracle Whip is amazing, I just make it differently as an adult now. When my suburban white foster parents introduced me to Pho at a strip mall, in my late twenties. Life changing. I ate the chicken version for too long not realizing how much better the beef, then ultimately, the house special pho was going to be. Realizing in the same shopping mall, with my same family members, at an Outback Steakhouse that getting a filet mignon prepared sous vide was a huge mistake. Huge. 

Everyone’s food path is unique to them. And I most certainly shouldn’t feel shame. But perhaps I should feel grateful. With most of the family I grew up with passing on, the lives and structure of my foster family and life, always moving, cherish is what I really should be doing with these memories. 

A chucnky, crunchy tuna salad sandwich will always be a favorite. Ham and cheese on potato bread with chips in the summer, that fueled me during the summer. At the whistle start of the 15-minute mandatory swim recess. My sister and I would bike home as fast as possible, probably taking out flower beds and old ladies on walkers, run into the kitchen in our now dry bathing suits to make these sandwiches, scarf them down on our way back, peddling like crazy, just to beat the whistle and be the first ones back in the pool.

I remember the smell of curry emanating from the apartment that my babysitter lived in, heavy with coconut and graham masala. We were under her care for about two weeks before going home. I was too young to know what the food was, to ask, or even retain the information had she provided it. And didn’t smell it again until I was a teenager. It had long been forgotten, but I knew it. And it was only years later that I remembered my babysitter from India.

The lesson my mom taught me at a steak house, when I was a pre-teen, that mixing starches with protein will raise your blood sugar and make you sleepy after a meal, I never forgot it. We’d literally eat pan fried steaks and broccoli at home all the time. Add a baked potato at the steakhouse, and suddenly it's nap time. I also remember from this evening that she felt too shy to get up after this meal because a man across the room had been giving her eyes all evening, and she was afraid when she stood up he would ‘really see’ her and be disappointed.

Thinking about the juxtaposition of eating steaks and fresh vegetables with my mom and dad, to later eating more processed one-pot-meals with my much more financially stable foster family is quite strange to realize. Sign of the trends in food processing or results of different upbringings? Children of the Berry Crocker era I suppose. 

So, between growing up with different food lifestyles, reidentifying my priorities through my early twenties, culinary school, diet and nutrition education, world travel and just personal preference, I am here, back at the beginning, learning to reconnect emotionally to my memories of food and not look at them shamefully but be grateful for where I came from and how I got here. 

The first time I was exposed to malt vinegar on fries was at a fair put on at my sister’s elementary school. The audacity of my father to drip watery vinegar on those hot salty fries… then the delight when I realized they were delicious. Could be the impetus of my love for fish and chips. I don’t think I had good ice cream until I was in my early twenties and ran away to Baltimore. My grandparents always bought Breyers, and my foster parents something comparable price wise. Then enter gelato. Hell yes. 

Beyond the canned food from my grandparents, the frozen vegetables my mom came to rely on, the processed American perfected casserole from my foster parents, is the fact that I’ve been lucky enough to have so many people feed me. I’m not who I am today because of it, but I’m here today because of it. Feeling a longing about not having any old family recipes passed down, no real cultural cuisine to bond to, no backyard chickens or fond gardening memories is ok. 

Remembering back to my first foster home, I was embarrassed to find out that the dirty or used oil was actually a marinade and I should not have dumped it down the sink. However, intrinsically I knew, on the same night, that rinsing cooked pasta with cold water was completely unnecessary and gross. I stand by this. 



Indulgence, comfort, warmth…nourishment?