A Love Story

With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, I began to think about love and how it relates to food. What is your favorite Valentine treat to receive? What treat do you share with your loved ones on Valentine’s Day? If you cook for others, do you consider that an act of love? For many of us, when we talk about food, we use words like love or passion. Food and love have been linked for generations. I am sure some of you have heard that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. The farm labor leader Cesar Chavez once said, “The people who give you their food give you their heart.”  

A friend once told me a story about her grandmother tapping the dough for a traditional bread that she made daily. She asked her grandmother why she tapped the bread before cooking, and her grandmother replied that she was “putting her blessing in the bread.” Does this act make the food tastier, healthier, or better? I like to think so.  

Often, when we cook for others, whether it be for our immediate family or a large group of people, we are putting our blessing, or our heart into the act of cooking. My son is a chef and has loved to cook for as long as I can remember. When I visited him over the winter break, I  cooked for him while he was at work. He was near tears when he thanked me for cooking for him. The simple act of cooking for him while he was at work moved him to tears of gratitude. What feelings do you have when someone cooks for you? How do you think your cooking makes other people feel? 

Chefs and foodies often talk about their passion for food. Everyone talks about food we love, food we hate, and our favorite food. How about the restaurants that you love so much that you recommend them to others? Food and love are inseparable.  

This Valentine’s Day, please consider our neighbors who have little choice in what food they have access to or what treats they can share with their families and send them a little love. Volunteer at a local food pantry or organize a food drive for one of Louisiana’s regional food banks, providing non-perishable foods that you love to our food insecure neighbors. Adding Valentine notes or Valentine-themed candies is also a nice treat. As author Virginia Woolf once wrote, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” 

My Valentine wish for all is that you dine well this Valentine’s Day.