A Little Food for Thought

I love food.
Okay, I know, seriously, who doesn't? I just had to get that statement out of my system before I could move on to a more substantial topic, namely my favorite food. My favorite food is pizza. Thin crust, deep dish, three cheese or three meat, it doesn't matter: I love it. I love it at parties, where everyone clamors over each other to grab a hot fresh slice from a box. We never need plates, just our hands and a napkin (if we're feeling fancy). I love getting individual pizzas too, the kind that definitely don't look individually sized. I even loved the pizza my friends and I ordered in Nashville, Tennessee, a ten inch pizza for $25 that had slices so small as to be personally offensive.
The great part about food, though, is not the pleasure of the taste buds. It's the pleasure of the soul. Food brings people together! Food can serve as a catalyst for conversations with strangers or a medium for making memories with friends. In whatever form in takes, it connects people. That's why whenever possible, I don't eat in solidarity, but surrounded by the company of friends and family or even random strangers. Here's a short peak at my daily eating escapades:
My brother and I always eat breakfast together. We are the lone souls up at five thirty every morning, trying to glean some sort of satisfaction from our twin bowls of plain Cheerios. We never talk. We don't have to. It's our comfortable silence, broken only by the occasional "pass the Grape Nuts", that brings us together.
Second period is truly a work of art when it comes to food for the soul. We all eat during class. Most days, you can catch us in the midst of a giant food swap, passing around people's lunch bags and cheap Styrofoam containers of microwaved noodles that sell at school for a dollar. Even our teacher usually gets in on the action! He brings food for us to try, everything from homemade cornbread to Wheat Thins to Vietnamese sweet bread. The shared food gives the class a casual, fun atmosphere. You can tell we're all real friends because we're not afraid to steal each other's food.
Dinner? Well, that's something special in my house. We always have family dinners together. Long after everyone has scraped their plates clean of Costco broccoli kale salad and homemade bread, we sit and savor the moment. We talk, we laugh, we reenact the latest studio C skits, we just enjoy each other's company. It's the one time of the day where the whole family is together, all electronics are off, and we can talk and have a good time.
Food is especially good for the soul around the holidays. The ridiculous amount of good food that accompanies Thanksgiving serves to remind me of all I have been blessed with: good food and good company to share it with. And Christmas is the same story.
When I started writing this post, I was kind of like, where am I going with this? Am I just feeling really hungry right now and all my thoughts are thus centered on tacos and pad thai and pizza? As I wrote, however, I was reminded that for many people, communal meals are not the norm. Most people don't have time to eat one sit-down meal all day, let alone hold regular family dinners. The world's a better place, however, when we stop to enjoy our food with the people we love.
Next time you gather around the dinner table (and I hope that next time is very soon!), take a moment to savor not just the fullness of your stomach but the fullness of your heart.
Feel free to post how food feeds your soul.