Remembering Home

 My family moved once but while I have two images of home in my head the thing separating them is not the small distance between those houses but my parent’s divorce. Fresh off the stalks sweetcorn with however much butter and salt you preferred, they were the best. At the time I could not stand to eat canned corn or store bought cobs when I had that to compare them to. We had steak so often I grew sick of it. My grandparents lived nearby and while we ate plenty of cheap store bought stuff when we ate with them we were always greeted with things like corn cobs, steaks, ham hock soup, and raspberry cobbler. Before we moved out of our house in town onto the farm my mom would make grape juice, there were some vines in our backyard, I don’t know how to describe it to highlight just how different it was to all the other grape juice I have ever drank but of the foods I remember from back then it is the one I miss the most.


 Later we started having Little Caesar’s pizza on an almost weekly basis. Hamburger Helper was another staple. The seasoning packets that come with Little Caesar’s pizza are really good for mac and cheese, and when making ramen noodles I like to do a double batch so I can mix the chicken and oriental spice packets in after draining most of the water.  I’m proud of the foods from both of those periods of my life, farming is not for me but I can certainly be proud of the foods my family worked hard to grow and cook well, and sure after the divorce money was tight and the food was not good but my mom was raising three kids by herself and she tried hard to make nice meals as often as she could.