Food ... the gift of love

Food is the very essence of who we are, we are defined by our cuisine, different ethnic groups are drawn together by the recipes they share. As a parent one of the basic gifts we give our children is food, from nursing to cooking their favourite treats, it is one of the ways we express our love for them. Being a Jewish mother I get a certain joy from feeding my jkids different foods, from creating meals I know that they will enjoy. From letting their palates experience the globe from our table. With Ryan's dietary restrictions, it is so hard for me to try and give her the culinary love I want to give her, there are times I want to just throw them in the car and head for the local ice cream palor and watch them devour a mountain of icecream, or pick up a candy treat or have them bake cookies with me like my mom and Grandmother did with me. Keeping Ryan's birthday low sugar was a challenge unto itself. She wants desperately to take cupcakes into camp and to indulge but I feel I just can't take the chance on her indulging and have some poor inexperienced counselors having to deal with the consequences. As a mother, a Jewish food obsessed mother I feel cheated, I feel cheated out of the joy of nourishing her spirit and not just her body. Yes we make fruit salad together or salads but we don't get our hands caught in cookie dough and lick the bowl of icing, kids covered in chocolate. Some of my fondest memories are making cupcakes with my grandmother with the silver balls on top, making yom tov cookies with my mom, the kids all had their own dough to roll out and decorate them as we wished.

I miss that experience with her. I miss being able to dig into that memory bank. I miss the carefree abandon of being 7, of the freedom of food, when it is eaten for pleasure not just sustenance where no calories are counted, no protein watched, no sugar passed up because being 7 does not give you much freedom but it gives you those pleasures. Pleasures she has been deprived from, and it makes me sad, for her and for what we are misiing.

Jewish guilt trip over for the moment.