For the Love of Food

This is the story of my relationship with food. How I came to love, appreciate & cherish it and how it changed my life. Clearly I’ve always loved food. My first word was “papa”, and no, I was not referring to my father when I screamed that word for the first time. “Papa” is a Spanish pet-name for food. I wanted that spoon full of mushy goodness in my mouth and I wanted it NOW. By my first birthday I weighed a healthy 30 or so pounds and my loving, dramatic Cuban aunts were already concerned about my adult obesity. They were persistent about putting me on this special baby diet which my mom just laughed off and continued to give me my “papa” when I demanded it. I never learned how to crawl because I couldn’t lift my fat ass off the floor. So I just laid there, in pure bliss, waiting for my next meal. I was one happy fat foodie baby.

I believe sugar runs in the veins of all Cubans. It’s in our blood and we crave it like we crave life. There was always something sweet at home growing up. My dad and I bonded over grocery runs after dinner to pick up ice cream, cake or whatever our sweet hearts desired that evening. Dessert was never a question, it was always the answer. My mother is a wonderful cook and always had a hot homemade meal prepared every evening usually consisting of rice, beans & some animal protein. We ate very little veggies and probably too much processed food. But we didn’t know the truth about food. That is until my dad went to the doctor.

It was probably 20 years since my dad had paid the doctor a visit. In 2007 after much nagging from my mother he finally went for a regular check-up & discovered he had high blood pressure. Before prescribing any pills the very smart doctor suggested my dad change his eating habits first. That same day my rice & beans loving father paid a visit to Whole Foods Market as the doctor suggested (mind you, he probably never stepped foot into such store) and revamped our pantry & fridge. My family had never seen so many fruits & vegetables in the fridge before. We all thought this was just a phase, we’ll have our ice cream and brownies back soon enough. Fast forward a few weeks later and my dad is literally counting how many nuts he can have as a snack. Within a few months he dropped 30 pounds and normalized his blood pressure, all through simply eating right & exercising. I’ve never seen such will power in a human being. My parents completely changed their lifestyle & became whole foodie veggie eating fanatics. It was a little comical yet very inspiring. It was through this experience that we learned food is medicine.

Meanwhile, I’m away at college eating taco bell for lunch, perhaps a lean cuisine when I wanted to be “healthy” and drinking my weight in beer every weekend. Thank God for my speedy metabolism which I must have prepped as a baby with the obscene amount of food I would stuff in my belly. How I didn’t gain 50 pounds in my 4 years at Florida State University is honestly a miracle. I had terrible eating habits, drank way too much & lived by the motto “I can sleep when I die”. But it was in the beautiful Tallahassee & in the midst of my ultimate unhealthiness that I fell in love with REAL food.

I started working at a little award-winning southern restaurant called Food Glorious Food. This was the kind of restaurant the local residents would come for a nice dinner, a business lunch meeting or for brunch after church on Sundays. You didn’t really see college kids here because the food was quite expensive for our standards. Everything was made from scratch, even the ketchup. It was fascinating and the food was absolutely incredible. Real, local, fresh & homemade. One evening my favorite chef, Chef Pete, made me a very special meal. Have you ever had a meal so full of life & love it changed you? This was that meal. It was a simple dish of wild-caught salmon over jasmine rice & sautéed spinach with a little salt & pepper for seasoning. That’s it. The ingredients were so fresh it didn’t need all of this sazón. Every bite pulled on my heart strings, perhaps because it was the first homemade meal I had in so long made with so much love just for me. I instantly had this new love for food & for Chef Pete (but that’s a story for another rainy day). My taco bell lunch runs were replaced with medium rare filet mignons paired perfectly with a dark, fruit forward Malbec. And for dessert, a southern classic hummingbird cake made with fresh pineapples & bananas making you hum after each cinnamon filled bite. There was absolutely no looking back.

In 2013 everything changed. I landed a dream job as a marketing manager for Whole Foods Market. At this point in my life I knew I loved food, I appreciated it more than the average person you could say, but I didn’t really know where our food came from or the people & stories behind the food. I’m not going to get all preachy about conventional grocery stores and how half the stuff on their shelves are chemicals concocted to look like food (another story for another rainy day). I will, however, say that Whole Foods Market changed me. It changed my view on food and in turn my view on life in general. I learned so much about where our food comes from, the people behind the products & their stories, why it’s so important to support local food vendors & even more important to minimize your intake of animal protein & dairy. I was always a foodie, but I was quickly becoming a compassionate conscious foodie. I was eating like I gave damn, because I did. I gave a damn about the quality of food I was putting in my body. I gave a damn that the chicken I was consuming came from a family farm that met basic animal welfare standards. I gave a damn if the tomatoes I was eating were picked by farmers that were paid fair wages. I gave a damn about everything I ate and I wanted to share this new found passion of food with the world!

So I finally have the opportunity to share. I sit here today getting ready for a new chapter in my foodie adventure. There is so much I’m looking forward to in this journey, but I have to admit, I think eating my way around the world is probably what I’m looking forward to the most. This relationship with food is like any other relationship in life. If you cherish it, it will cherish you. If you love food, it will love you. I plan on savoring every single bite out there, appreciating the story behind it & never forgetting to thank God for allowing me to experience this once in a lifetime foodie adventure!

Do you remember the first time you fell in love with food? Share your foodie love story in the comments below!