you are what you eat! (feed the fish, it's their birthday)

In the world of family traditions, food seems to play a critical part of many meaningful hours of fellowship. I have long considered this phenomenon. Consider...why would this be? Why does food equal 'good times'? I really began to consider this when I turned 30 and realized that I had to actually consider what foods I ate and when. The realization that the days of whatever and whenever were over if I wanted to maintain my health was quite a blow, to be sure! I realized then, how much of our family (immediate and extended) traditions that we all look forward to involve a lot of really tasty food. I tried to fight it for awhile. I ranted about it, cooked a lot of healthy alternatives and suggested other activities for celebrating. All of this was met with outward patience and inward hostility from my loved ones. I succumbed....I still make the cookies, pies, and heavy dishes that they all expect on certain occasions. The trade-off? We eat 'clean' the rest of the time. A solid arrangement that we can all live with.

The family 'food' tradition that I value the most is Birthdays. A tradition in our home (and my mother's home), is that the person having a birthday chooses the dinner and the cake. The cake is always home-made and the dinner is something prepared by me or at a restaurant of his or her choosing. It's a little way for all of us to enjoy the special day considering that the birthday person almost always chooses to eat out.  I think it became a tradition on accident...likely born out of convenience. When I remind the family of an upcoming birthday, the response is always, "where are we eating?".  We have come to expect how each birthday will be defined depending on who is having their special day, as we can see a marked part of the personality of our special person bleeding through in their food choice, for instance; we will enjoy the Japanese experience on my youngest son's birthday who hopes to live in Asia one day; Mexican on mine, which happens to be a culture I have experienced a lot of and enjoy a great deal. It will be food from the sea for my middle son, who would live on a boat if he could. You get the picture...on birthdays, a part of who we are is truly expressed in what we eat!