#SaturdayPlatterDay Musings 5.15.21

Saturday Platterday – Mother’s Day edition.

Technically this platter was created on Sunday and technically I’m posting on a Sunday, but since I created #SaturdayPlatterDay, I also make the rules for what counts and what doesn’t.

This platter definitely counts.

In our house, I am usually the exclusive platter creator. I spend my days constructing platters in my head. I dream in platters. So it only makes sense that I am that one who takes control of this sacred task. I always figured that was part of the draw of platters for me. That because I was the one who lovingly put them together, they were like a piece of art with my name signed in the bottom right hand corner. The victory that accompanied a gloriously beautiful platter was what made the bounty that much sweeter.

But this past mother’s day, I realized that wasn’t necessarily true. I mean, who wants to go to an art museum just to see wall after wall covered in your own art (I mean, that would be kind of cool, but not really the point of an art museum)? I let someone else near the canvas last weekend, and the results were nothing short of delicious (I swear I’m done with the artwork metaphors).

Sometimes I spend so much time planning and prepping a platter that by the time the final product comes around, all my energy is used up and I’m so hungry and tired that I end up shoving fistfuls of food into my mouth without stopping to appreciate it (or take a breath). But last weekend, someone I love prepared some of my favorite food in my favorite form because of his love for me. A beautiful, beautiful thing.

So here are a few things I learned from my first ever Mother’s Day (spoiler alert, they are all food related):

• Food is my love language. And my husband knows this. The whole day revolved around the epic meals we planned, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s how I most appreciate those I love showing their gratitude- through things I can consume. I have felt for a long time now that one of my callings is to show love to others through filling their bellies. But until my husband placed the lovingly prepared feast before me, I didn’t fully acknowledge that I also receive love in the same way.
• I have vivid memories of times in my life when my anxiety was eating me alive, only to be met with the comfort that came from my mom’s cooking. Homemade chocolate chip cookies waiting, still warm, after a long and tense first day of school. The smells of spaghetti sauce simmering when I arrived home from cross-country practice, worried sick about the next day’s meet. Sweet potatoes with cinnamon and melted butter the night before my first marathon. A slice of carrot cake so delicious that its powers could even vanquish the stress felt after trying to calculate how many calories I consumed during Easter dinner. Dish after dish of homemade meals in the weeks after Ari was born when I was so worried about everything, the thought of feeding myself was (for once), far from my mind. I could go on and on but the point is, a mother’s cooking is a powerful remedy for a wide variety of life’s troubles.
• I didn’t realize it at the time, but making food for others was how I learned to mother before I actually became a mother. I’m not saying that only mothers show their love through feeding others or that feeding others is a staple of motherhood. But for me, a naturally self-centered person, cooking for friends and family was always the best sure-fire way for me to get out of my own head and focus on others through a labor of love. From planning the meals based on likes and dislikes that may vary from my own to serving around other people’s schedules and making sure everyone had enough to eat and enough leftovers to take home, I learned how to care for others. I constantly fall victim to spending too much time turning inward; What were my needs, what were my wants, what were my feelings, etc. It was something I had to (at least partially) let go of if I was going to be the caregiver to a little helpless human. And cooking for others was the perfect, if unexpected, catalyst for that.
• How beautiful is it that someday my own son will have memories where good smells, tasty food, and dinner table laughter wrap together, providing an escape when the anxieties of life surround him.

Happy (belated) Mother’s Day, everyone.

Platter details: “Mother’s Day Meatballs” by Jackson Lytle. Chicken feta meatballs, mixed baked sweet potato and regular fries, sun-dried tomato feta spread, diced cucumbers and tomatoes, turkey bacon, mini pitas to stuff everything in, hummus and veggies.