your table

Have you ever been talking to someone and had a startling moment of clarity.
I love when that happens.
My friend had emailed me a link to marvelous meal suggestions.
Aren't meal suggestions worth their weight in gold?
Somedays it seems as though I have forgotten food.
It is as though all the meals of my life have swirled out of focus and I can't think what to make for supper.
I wonder what it is I have been eating all these years.
I wonder what it is I want to eat now.
I wonder.
It's not that I'm not hungry.
Or that I have forgotten the joy of cooking.
It's just that I have no idea at all what to make.
I just need a suggestion to jolt me into action.
A suggestion is sort of like a challenge I suppose and I love challenges.
On your mark, get set, go.
Go make this, or that, with these, or those and I am off to the kitchen, gratefully chopping and slicing.
I know what to do.
I know now what to make.

And that makes me think of default meals.
Those meals we tend to default to when all else fails.
They are also worth their weight in gold.
They are our true comfort food.
And they tend to shift and change over time.
When I was a new wife and a new cook, I made lasagne frequently. It was a default meal.
Stir fry and pizza have both been default meals over the years as has macaroni and cheese and sweet and sour meat balls.
I was telling my friend, that my default meal now is likely roast chicken for supper and soup for lunch when I had one of those startling moments of clarity,
I... have....become....my.....grandmother!
Wow, thanks grandma. I can almost feel my self sitting at your table.