Innocent Beginnings: Why I Want to Write About Food

I’m not a nutritionist, and I have NO IDEA WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT, but let’s keep this blog positive.

When my mother and I immigrated to the states in the early ‘90s, I had never heard of McDonald’s or Roy Rogers or french fries or super sized meals or people having competitions where they stuffed as many hot dogs as possible, and as quickly as possible, into their mouths to win a prize or an honorable mention. Actually, I had never even seen a hot dog. The Soviet border had been closed, and I was young, and oh-so-naïve about food.

The only important food lesson I truly retained from that stage of my childhood came from "Vinni Puh": certain products are delicious and desirable, but difficult to obtain.



What I also remember is that most food products took time and effort to acquire then. My grandmother and I would navigate the busy city streets with a sense of urgency that only a child really eager to grow up and a soon-to-be retiree could feel as they marched into the future. We would take the trolleybus over to a poultry kiosk in the morning and then head over to a little dairy shop a few blocks away to get the rest of what we needed for that week. On the way back we would stop at a third shop to pick up toilet paper and a few other necessities. Although Grandma is and was an incredible cook, the ingredients used were nothing extravagant and there was little food waste or leftovers at the end of a meal. Like people in any circumstance, we made due with what we had and never imagined that elsewhere, others were leading completely different lives that included tons of yellow bananas in the winter--sometimes bananas with ice cream (!!!), Snickers ice cream bars for dessert, tall glasses of Coca-Cola with dinner, giant food mega centers for shopping and “fast-food” places for fun.