The Power of Food

Well it's been a while my friends, but it is time to get back at it. I apologize for being away so long.

It's funny that no matter how busy life gets...husband, father of 4, friend, retail manager, there is always one constant that keeps me grounded, brings me back to reality, calms me down after a bad day, makes a good day into a great day, and that's food. Now, it's not the I need to sit down and eat a family size bag of potato chips to myself type of food experience that I am talking about, It is the excitement of seeing a new recipe I want to try on one of the social media platforms, it's watching The Food Network with my family, it's going out to a new restaurant or food truck that we haven't tried before, and last and most importantly of all, it is cooking for my friends and family.

The power of food to bring people together has had an over-whelming effect on me. When I think about it, I think back to my childhood and to the importance of the Sunday dinner. This had many different forms over the years, from those "special treat" Sundays where my parents would let us eat dinner downstairs in the recroom and we would put on the CBC on channel 2 and they would  let us watch the Disney Sunday Movie as a family, to a time where my sister and I had just recently moved out and started our own separate families, so the Sunday dinner became the time where we all got back together around my parents dinning room table and caught up with each others lives.

One of wonderful thing about the Sunday dinner was the different variety of guests that would join us around the table. From Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and Grandparents to friends and co-workers, all ages, all different backgrounds, the Dinner table was a place to eat, to drink, to break bread, to share ideas and opinions, to debate, to laugh and to enjoy. Jokes were told, world issues were solved, and heated debates carried out until the dinner plates were cleared.

Like everything in life, things change things adapt. My parents eventually retired and moved out of the city. This made the Sunday dinner a little more challenging, but as our adult lives evolved so did the new version of the Sunday dinner. It wasn't specifically on Sundays anymore, and now it wasn't primarily at my Parents place. Family gatherings now became the new Sunday dinner.. Birthday parties, Holidays, Super Bowl parties, these were the new get togethers, and wow how they have grown. What use to be 4 - 10 people around the dinner table has now flourished into 20- 30 people occupying all areas of the house, eating, talking, debating, joking and laughing, with different topics of converstion from one room to the next.

The faces have changed over the years, some friends have come and gone, some family have come and gone as well, but the power of food to bring people together hasn't changed. It allows us to live in that moment, it makes us feel like we have never been apart, it lets us feel safe,  that our opinions do matter,  that there is always someone to listen, and that what ever may be going wrong in your life just doen't matter right now, because the feeling of being part of this event just feels so right .

So, If it's alright with everybody, I'd like to invite you into my world of food, to have all of you join me at my virtual dinner table. I will share some of my favorite recipes, review some of the local restaurants and smaller unknown grocery stores, and we will have a few dinner table debates over some of the topics of the day.

Please follow me on twitter @awateats  and look for me on instagram under awateats as well

I look forward to sharing this journey with all of you

Awat