I still need to express in writing my view of the perfect pizza.
I am looking forward to making pasta dough, and gnocchi ravioli from scratch.
Sometimes, when I am about to fall asleep, my mind keeps running about food. And all these ideas start appearing.
I often thought of a cell phone like a person. The difference between body, soul, and spirit can be seen clearer using the analogy of a cell phone. First of all, the body is the physical part of us. In the case of the cell phone, it is the actually cell phone, the tangible device you hold in your hand. However, the cell phone would have no life without its soul, which is the software/programming that makes it process information. For us, this is our mind, our will, and our emotions. Who we are, our personality, is basically our soul. Finally, the spirit, though people often find it hard to see the difference between soul and spirit, to me it is like the cell phone service provider. The spirit is essentially what connects you to the Higher Power, just like the signal on the cell phone. Many times I would think about the extreme difference between having a working phone that turns on, and having a working phone that turns on and is connected to a cell phone carrier, where it can perform its purpose. Just like us, we can be alive, and functioning, but there is still another level to us, with that same ability to connect.
It’s not about being religious, or being a fanatic it’s about recognizing the universal truths we should live by to have, and enjoy our life. Because we all know that living soley for personal gain, never leads to happiness. These truths are those that after you read them somewhere, you realize that you have known that to be true the whole time. The following is an example of a universal truth:
Something I wrote on October 23, 2011-
“The reality is I do not believe in babies.
Sounds weird, huh? I mean, I am not ignorant, I am perfectly aware that babies exist, and people have babies (sometimes lots of them), and yes, I know where they come from. However, it just blows my mind the concept of their being absolutely nothing, just organic matter, similar to another cell in the body, and then out of seemly nowhere, BAM! A new life! I just find it semi-impossible for ordinary organic matter to turn into a life. Crazy, just crazy, (and, BTW, this amazement also happens to me with seeds I plant in my garden, too). It’s like they literally come from nowhere. All which that person is to become, at one moment it’s not there, and the next moment it is. Besides knowing the science behind the whole baby event, and I have my beliefs about a Divine hand in the whole process, to me it was just inconceivable. I could never, and still never have been able to visualize myself pregnant. It is just hard for me to imagine looking at my belly and knowing that, besides the last thing I ate, there is also a forming human inside there, that wasn’t there before. It’s amazing, astonishing, and so underappreciated by so many. Some people find absolutely nothing interesting in it. However, for me, it is something, so out of this world, that I cannot imagine ever going through that. ”
Yesterday, I got my answer. I remembered a passage in the bible that talked about how God calls things into existence. I looked it up and in Romans 4: 17,( coincidently it is talking about babies, among other things), and the last part says: “(He) who creates new things out of nothing.” That is how I was finally able to conceive the concept of conception, by understanding that new life is definitely more than its organic components.
I’ve always believed that we are responsible for our actions. The life we live now is, in some way, a result of the decisions we have made. I do not believe in blaming someone or something else for our current situation. If we were dealt a bad hand, then we should work with what we’ve got. Yes, I am harsh, but I am a fighter. Not a person who fights with others, because our quarrel shouldn’t be with others, but against staying stuck in life’s unfortunate circumstances. Not that I haven’t had to deal with bad situations or haven’t felt discouragement. It’s just that, I am the kind of person that believes that discouragement just means, you were encouraged to do something else. So, when things look bleak and hopeless, I don’t whine, complain, and blame anyone, I ask myself: “Can I do anything to change this?” If I can’t then, I move on. If I can do something to change or improve the situation, I make my plan, break it into doable steps and act on it. One will never be able to work on self-improvement, until they can be sincere, and take accountability for their actions. Remember the only person you can control is yourself.
I compare graduating from college with being a toddler. You have been years preparing, but have not been able to practically apply what you have been taught to do. In the same way, toddlers have the capacity to learn new things, but it is a bit awkward and difficult to actually begin doing day-to-day things. It’s those fine motor skills that have to be developed. We go thru that stage again, where we are clumsy, uncoordinated, and somewhat lost. Where we have to depend on others to teach us, and guide us in the beginning. We are like this lump of clay that has to be molded. We have the potential, and now we have to actually make that into something tangible. People might think that graduating college means we’ve arrived, but it just means we’ve arrived at the bottom step, and it’s time to start climbing up.
My childhood was spent mostly in restaurants. The owners of the restaurants most likely regretted having announced: “2 Kids eat free with every Adult entrée”, when my family composed of exactly 2 adults and 4 kids would show up. My father loved taking our family out to eat, but he wasn’t one to spend a dollar over what he absolutely had to, so he conveniently found all the restaurants where these offers existed. Thus, at one point in my childhood I clearly remember the following weekly restaurant schedule: Mondays- Rex’s Chicken (similar to KFC), Wednesdays- Shoney’s (all you can eat salad bar), and Fridays- Pizette’s (Pizza Buffet). Of course by that time I was probably already 8 years old, but my memories of eating out went even farther back.
Ever since I can remember, maybe since I was a tiny 3-year-old living in Tulsa, I remember going to the grand Harvest Buffet where the delights seemed endless, barely being able to look at the food on display, and getting help from total strangers to reach the food I wanted. I remember Po Folks, where Southern and Western foods were always being served. We weren’t real fast food people, except for the occasional Taco Mayo were the tacos were amazingly only 30 cents!! My father preferred going to restaurants, it was the experience that would bring us together often, and I might say, united us as a family.
No, it was not the restaurant that magically would bring the family together, it was because it gave us all a chance to sit together and share before the food came. My father felt very strongly about the family always eating together, even at home, he wanted us to all sit at the table and eat together. I didn’t realize it then, but that was a key to our family unity.
Years later, when we moved to Puerto Rico, even though we were pretty bad off financially, my father would at least take us out to get fried chicken and fries for $1.50 a box, in his effort to continue keeping the family close. Unfortunately, we were all, fast becoming teenagers, which meant our attitudes, and busier lives were drawing us apart, to the point where we would no longer have any meal at home together. Everyone would eat when they could, on the couch, or preferably at a friend’s home, and the family times became almost exclusively at restaurants.
Dad found a pizza place where pizza was inexpensive and good, and would find any excuse to pile us all into the cramped, beat up, Ford Taurus to get there. We also developed a fondness for certain fast foods like Burger King, but later our best-loved fast food spot was Wendy’s. At one point in my teenage years, we would literally go to Wendy’s everyday. Even when Mom would cook, we would eat early, and magically be hungry a few hours later, so we could head out to Wendy’s. If we went out to a church activity or service, you could be 100% sure where we would end up after, no matter how late it was. We ate out 5-7 times per week, mostly fast food, but at least once a week, we would go to a restaurant.
Dad always had an eye for finding good restaurants. On one of his work outings, he spotted an Italian Trattoria named Cano’s. We tried it and fell in love, in fact, my sisters’ fifteenth birthday party was celebrated there, and we stayed as loyal customers. Even, when my family left Puerto Rico after 9 years, my husband and I would continue going there every single week. He shares my love for good food, so it easily became our favorite restaurant, uniting our tiny, new family composed of 2.
Never had the idea that food brought people together hit me so hard as when I saw my family actually come home for dinner, for the first time in a long time. At that time, I wasn’t married yet, but my parents were living in the States already. It was just one of my older sisters, my brother, and I at home. The reality was there was no one appointed as the cook, all of us worked, so we kind of just fended for ourselves. I would eat at my boyfriend’s house, where his parents would effortlessly cook up wonderful Puerto Rican cuisine. Meanwhile, my sister and brother would go to Wendy’s for their daily bread. Cooking at home was out of the question, the only one who knew how to cook was me, and I wasn’t about to assume that responsibility myself if no one else was going to cook either. Don’t get me wrong, I loved to cook, and now even more, but at that point I wanted the responsibilities to be shared. If I was going to cook for us, my sister would have to too. In the midst of this time in our lives, we became good friends with a man who knew a great deal about cooking. He would cook for all of us, and have the meal ready when we arrived from work. The first day he cooked for us, I remember calling my brother to tell him to come home after work to eat. That was the first time in years, my brother came home right after work just for a meal. Setting the table that first day, knowing we were all going to sit together, and eat, for the first time in maybe years, made me realize the uniting power of food.
Sara E Dunphy 