Being Irish, I grew up eating a Sunday roast.
Thanksgiving was nothing more than a pilgrim-created obstacle in the way of Christmas; a dead bird in the street that forced a brief detour.
When I met my husband, I refused to invite him home for Passover because I was embarrassed my mother might serve all the catered dishes in the wrong order.
My favorite healthy foods are Jamaican chicken soup, Jamaican chicken stew peas, Jamaican brown stew chicken, plantains and banana chips.
A ritual or tradition can be as simple as something you do every night, like read a story to a small child, or something you do weekly, such as go out for Chinese food.
I'm from Manchester, Mass., so it was lobster, lobster and more lobster! Also, lots of fish that we caught in the summers, clam chowder and roast beef sandwiches. But my mom was pretty healthy; we had a lot of chicken and broccoli and rice as well.
I want my daughter to grow up with memories of home-cooked meals, just as I did as one of seven children by Moroccan parents.
We were never the family that ordered pizza, and my mom never came home with a bucket of fried chicken. My mom always made home-cooked meals. We always sat down at the dinner table as a family.
I'm not the number-one fan of the heavy holiday meal. And also, I didn't grow up eating them, the traditional Western holiday meals, so it's just not something I have a nostalgic relationship to.
The best food I've ever eaten in my life has come from the poorest communities.
The family dinner table is the cornerstone of civilization and those who 'graze' from refrigerators or in front of the television sets are doomed to remain in a state of savagery.
My family lived off the land and summer evening meals featured baked stuffed tomatoes, potato salad, corn on the cob, fresh shelled peas and homemade ice cream with strawberries from our garden. With no air conditioning in those days, the cool porch was the center of our universe after the scorching days.
I'm a big believer in creating family traditions. Every Tuesday morning, I make a proper eggs breakfast, and we all sit down and eat.
There's so much that can be learned from French cooking, especially really traditional, more modest meals.
My aunt and uncle would come over when my mom was making this, or we would go over there when they were making that. That's what food is.
I love Sunday lunches with the family that start at 1 P.M. and finish at 5 P.M.
I was raised on T.V. dinners because in those days, they were considered a well-balanced meal. And when I was sick, my mother fed me beef-barley soup and peanut butter sandwiches. That's about it for childhood food memories.
