FOOD FOR THOUGHT
By: Tyler Benoit
A soup with pieces of dough in it with veggies and chicken slathered in chicken broth, thickened almost like gravy. One of the most delicious meals I have ever enjoyed and still enjoy to this day. My favorite food is chicken pot pie soup if you couldn’t tell from that short description. My grandparents made it for me once a week and after they left to live in Florida, and I lost contact with them my parents still make it monthly.
Sitting at the dining room table finishing up my easy multiplication and division homework from third grade while waiting for dinner to be ready I get the sudden smell of my favorite meal being prepared. I get asked to peel and cut potatoes and I enthusiastically put down the homework I am working on and start the process immediately. In that moment I do not care about my education I really only care about one thing and that is helping my family prepare for dinner. As I peel the potatoes and cut them and put them in a pile on the paper towel my grandmother takes them away and puts them in. For next hour or so I continue working on homework and after I finish the food is finally ready and I can finally get to eating my favorite meal of all time.
I remember every week of my young childhood, until my grandparents left for good after a family argument, that I would be sitting at the kitchen table doing some complicated homework I was doomed to fail but the thought of the food that was to come was all I needed to get me through it. My mother always said that I loved eating the dish because it brought me a since of peace growing up in such a chaotic environment with terrible grandparents and being a triplet and the least liked of the three (according to my grandparents) that was all I had to look forward to. At the time it seemed completely normal to me but after multiple therapy sessions over the years I have learned how chaotic my life really was, but everyone always feels that I made it through because of the food. It seems almost morbid, but that food has such a deep connection to me because it helped me through such a dark time of my life.
Eating that weekly growing up definitely wasn’t the best thing for my health and is one hundred percent why I am overweight now, but that meal made my day every time because it was so delicious. It doesn’t even have that much of a flavor and always needed salt, but it was just the experience and connection that it brought me. When I get to eat it know there are a lot of experiences that I remember that I am not a fan of but even then, it does bring back some good times and those always outweigh the terrible memories.
I decided to have an interview with my mother about the chicken pot pie soup. I chose her for this because her mother, my grandma, is the one that used the recipe all the time and I thought since she had grown up with the dish, she would also be good to ask these questions to.
The first question that I had asked her was what is your relationship to the dish? Her reply to this was, “My mother made the dish for me growing up and after they left, we wanted to keep making it because we know how much you and your brothers enjoy it. To me it doesn’t mean much to me, but you and your brothers love it, so we are going to continue to make it.” I really enjoyed hearing this reply from my mother. Knowing she really only enjoys making me the dish because she knows I have a deepened emotional connection to it she continues to make it makes me so overjoyed. I didn’t even realize this and now that I know that I think I may have even formed a stronger bond with my mother.
The second question that was asked to my mother was, why do you think I like the dish so much? My mother’s reply this time was, “I think you enjoyed it so much because that was what was made weekly in the house. It isn’t the most flavorful dish in the world but since it was something that you have eaten almost every week of your life, I believe you formed an emotional attachment to it.” I thought this was extremely insightful from her point of view while not knowing the extent of the connection I have to this dish, but maybe deep down she does really know how I feel about it.
The next obvious question was to know if this was her favorite meal too. And if it wasn’t was to find out what her favorite dish really is. Her reply to these questions were, “this dish actually isn’t my favorite dish, but lasagna soup is actually my favorite. I love this dish so much because it is so good. It’s my favorite meal and I am honestly offended it isn’t your favorite meal too because I always make it.” After hearing that I almost wanted to scrap this entire paper and restart because lasagna soup might be a much better soup compared to the chicken pot pie soup because it has so much more flavor. Thinking about this I fell into an existential crisis wondering if I had done the wrong thing, but thinking about my emotional connection to the dish I knew I had to keep going because although lasagna soup tastes better, my connection with the chicken pot pie soup is so much greater and so much more emotional.
The last question that I asked her I came up with and it was, would you prefer if I didn’t want to eat this dish so often? Her immediate reaction and response to this was, “I think if it is something that you want to eat often then it doesn’t matter to me about how I feel about the dish.” I enjoyed hearing this dish, but I can’t help but think that it would better to not ask for this meal so often. Will I continue to ask for the dish? Yes, but I feel like I may ask for the meal less often now knowing the things and thoughts I know now.
After that interview with my mother about the chicken pot pie soup I feel as though I learned so many things that I had never known before. Which is a strange feeling to have; I have lived under the roof of my mother since birth and finding out things now after going off to college over two hours away from home to just strange to me. I thought I knew everything about her but since leaving home I have learned so many things, not even from the interview, but in general which really has me wondering if I know people, especially my family, as much as I thought I did.
My thoughts on the dish after writing this paper are even stronger know. I will continue to enjoy the food just as much as I did before but now it feels a little different to me. After learning the things, I did about my mother’s thoughts on the dish and analyzing how I feel about it brought a different feeling into it. Although I will continue to think nothing of it while eating it because I really just want to eat for that sense of comfort, but for a long time I will think about the past that this dish really has with me and the thought that goes into my mother making this for me and the amount of stress and chaos I came from and how I overcame that with a simple meal of chicken broth, chicken, dough, and potatoes, with a pinch of salt for taste.
After writing this paper I thought I should include a link to a recipe for the soup; this recipe is very different from what the dish actually is, but it is close to it. My parents have a recipe to go by at home but after decades of making it and eating it there is no need for it anymore. The link can be found after this;
