Restaurant Speaker Promotion

Marissa Krekeler
Ms. Wilson

AP Brit & World Lit
December 3, 2013

The Dance of Food

I have a big house. This is because there are many people to fill my house; but every day they depart for work or tuck themselves away in their rooms, and leave this big house to be quiet and lonely. Diner is our big meal together, where everyone crowded around the table and discussed their day, while shoveling food in their mouths. In the morning, everyone leaves at different times; from 6 am to noon people are running around the house trying to get ready. For lunch, no one is home. Dinner was our “communion”, as Thomas C. Foster said in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, “‘I’m with you, I like you, we form a community together.’ And that is a form of communion,” (Foster).  However, dinner also seemed to be over too fast, except when we made lasagna.

Every light in the house is on, shining on my mother as she dances around the stove listening to Peter Gabriel and Annie Lennox. Before I even step foot in the room, she’s telling me to grab some pasta and add it to the fuming pot of water. While the noodles soften she takes out a big bowl and asks me, “Do you want to help make the cheese filling?”

Together, we make a concoction of ricotta cheese and mozzarella, when my sisters come bolting down the stairs hollering, “I wanna help!! Let me do it!” Now the big kitchen is crammed tight with people cooking, running around the fridge and stove. My sisters fighting over the most miniscule things, my brother sneaking downstairs occasionally to steal some food, and my mother laughing and dancing. This big house is now filled with noise, food, people, and life.

Everyone helps prepare the meal, and everyone helps eat it. Cutting the dish into large squares, my mother divvies the meal to each plate. After the fork is plunged into the food, it instantly falls apart into a messy pile of sauce, noodles, and cheese. We all laugh as my sister manages to spill the meal all over her face.

I grew up knowing food brought people together. Katheryn Twiss in The Archaeology of Food and Identity explains, “We are what we eat. We also are where we eat, how we eat, and with whom we eat,” (Twiss). When the oven started beeping, my siblings would rush into the kitchen, my father would come home from work, drinks would be poured, dishes and silverware passed out and we would be together for the first time all day. There was no such thing as discomfort or anything inappropriate at our dinner table, if you wanted to sing and dance while you ate, the rest of the family would probably join you.

If I’m ever upset or lonely I’d remember these silly times I spent with my friends and family. When I ate lasagna, all the times we sat around the table talking and laughing would rush back to me. Marjorie Halford stated, “Familiar foods can put them in touch with a crystalline memory of their past. It brings them comfort when very little else does,” (Halford). I shaped my life around this concept, knowing food could establish new and old friendships and make people happy. Every day I come home, turn on every light in the house and dance around the kitchen cooking.