Since scraping my knees and making mud pies at recess, I have loved the beauty that is food.

When I was younger, I got the best “ear itch” from the sound of my mom’s spoon scratching the bottom of rice pots and the smell of legume that some people hate.

I loved the end of my stomach grumbling that signaled the end of our long church services, a hunger satiated by the bite of a pâté. The layers of grease that painted our lips as we bit into the softness of spiced meat and crusted shells. It was heaven.

We used to hear so many compliments on my mom’s cooking; I beamed with pride when I heard the grating of fish scales against butcher knives in the kitchen. I miss the times when my siblings and I ran around the house, salivating at the smell of food filling our home.

Sitting at our dinner tables, we were just kids eating what our mom made.

When life changed, and mom couldn’t be around, we stopped eating food on kitchen tables, and likewise I stopped feeling so much like a child.

After working, school, cleaning, and forgetting to be young, I sometimes hated the idea of making a meal for that would be later critiqued for taking too long. After my parents’ divorce there was a time were my mom absence, cooking and food felt ugly. Kitchen tables turned to couches, sweets used to numb outer pain, and food aroma turned burnt from the amateur nature of a teenage cook.

When I say I love food, I sometimes get a look. A look of — obviously you do— it does make me chuckle sometimes because I often mean the nostalgia, the unity, the sense of pride that comes with a good meal.

Time seemingly heals all wounds, and I have started to love the smell of hot grease, tears from onions, and the beauty of food.

I hope you get to enjoy a warm meal with the people you love, happy Sunday.