"I'm hoping I am making memories for my boys of coming home to a delicious snack or a yummy dessert, and that the smell of cookies will remind them of how much they are loved." Discussing how food is a love language to your kids, and your kid's friends.
(This article was written a few years ago now, pre-pandemic times, but I still like it as it is a snapshot into what our lives were then, and I already miss those days!)
“If only they had offered me something to eat,” the interview would not have been so bad, said my 16 year old son. We had just sat through a 2 hour interview with a college advisor. I was turned off by how much the advisor talked about herself and her kids and failed to ask any questions of my husband and I as to our college preferences and interests. She made many assumptions which I found found offensive. Max wasn’t so critical, he was simple hungry. I was recovering from the stomach flu and hadn't made us any breakfast before we headed out. While the advisor had offered my husband and I coffee, she did not offer any snacks. I got to thinking that there were just a couple simple things she could have done different to make the interview a much better experience, which might have led to us hiring her. She could have interested us with a energetic slideshow of college campuses/life across the country, had a video of testimonials from previous students she had helped get into their dream college, had some cool college gear on display, had admission statistics, or facts about small verse large colleges that would have sparked some curiosity. She could also have offered some snacks.
This led me to think about how important food is to teenagers. Teenagers are always hungry. And they eat a lot! Basically the way to their hearts is through their stomaches. Feed them, and they are happy. Food is a love language to your kids, and your kid’s friends. Although I don’t love to cook, I do get a great deal of satisfaction out of feeding my boys and their friends. I like to think that I am creating memories for them. Memories of someone loving and caring for them. One treat I especially love to make is homemade Toll House chocolate chip cookies. They are extremely tasty and smell delicious. Every time I smell fresh cookies I am reminded of good times and my mom’s homemade meals. Smells have a wonderful way of invoking memories.
I love the story my mom tells of her college days. She went to Berkeley and lived in a sorority house above Piedmont, so up a long hill from the campus. Every day at 3:00 her house mother would bake fresh cookies and put them out for the girls. My mom would tell me how she would hike up that hill everyday just to have a fresh homemade cookie. I kinda thought she was crazy for arranging her schedule around this, but it goes to show how powerful homemade treats can be.
I have always loved to bake chocolate chip cookies. My senior year in high school I was co-captain of the girls swim team.
My co-caption Robin and I would give all the girls on the team goodie bags every week before each meet. We almost always baked chocolate chip cookies from scratch. I recall many a night staying up till midnight preparing these goodie bags for our teammates. It's funny because the only picture I can find of us baking cookies is a picture of a batch we burnt terribly. I think we didn't use enough flour and baked way too long. I think we had to document our horrible batch!
I have another friend Caroline who was my most frequent cookie making companion. Also funny is that the one picture I have of Caroline and I making cookies was not making them, but eating the dough! That was always the best part! We made cookies often, and there is one time I’ll never forget. We were baking them to take with us for a week long school trip to Yosemite. As we were baking them we got to thinking how we didn't want to give them all away on the bus ride up there. So we pulled out a portion of the dough and sabotaged it. We put all kinds of random spices in them with the kicker being Vegemite from Australia, which both of us found disgusting. Shortly after embarking on the ride to Yosemite, we pull out our bag of cookies and start eating them. Sure enough, everyone began asking for some. So we took our “special” batch out and handed them out. We started giggling and were besides ourselves watching people’s reactions as they bit into them. We actually couldn’t pull off our prank because we couldn’t control our laughter, and ended up sharing all our good cookies also.
Another funny food memory I have is from when Max was in pre school. At the time, I was putting quite a bit of effort into making homemade healthy dinners. I was making bbq lemon meatloaf, a delicious family chicken recipe with chutney and oranges called Kitzi’s chicken with brown rice, browned pork chops with apples and sherry and roasted potatoes and grilled asparagus, layered enchilada pie with chips and guac, Chinese chicken salad…. Every night a different recipe with different flavors.
Max was asked by his teachers what was the best thing I cooked for him. He replied instant oatmeal. He was then asked to explain how I made it. He said, she takes the oatmeal pack, cuts it open, pours it into a bowl, adds water and microwaves it for a minute. Ha! Well I’ll be damned. One thing I do know is that everyone appreciates a good homemade cookie.
My boys have lots of friends over, all the time. I love it. This also means that I have to have lots of food on hand. Snack cupboard filled with snacks, fruit bowl loaded, and garage fridge stocked with a supply of drinks. But I also like to surprise them as often as I can with fresh homemade cookies.
Someday, when my boys are off at college, I hope they come home requesting cookies. I also hope that when my boys are grown and they are reminiscing with their friends about their childhood, they talk about how they loved the cookies I baked for them. I’m hoping I’m making memories for my boys of coming home to a delicious snack or a yummy dessert, and that the smell of cookies will remind them of how much they are loved.
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