Food essay (Draft)

Alexa DeGroat

English 121-012

Food Essay Draft

2-22-2011

When I heard I had to write an essay about food, I started thinking, what is one of the most memorable experiences I have had with food? The first thing that came to mind was Christmas Dinner with my extended family.

My family’s Christmas Dinners are usually held at my Uncle Monte and Aunt Lydia’s house. The house is usually pretty full with over 40 family members from ages 1-81, because there are so many people, there must also be a lot of food, which takes a lot of time to prepare. So we usually start making the food on Christmas Eve. Each family brings a few dishes to the dinner, this year my family brought mash potatoes which we usually we would use mash potato mix out of a box, but for the family dinner we decided to get fancy and make it with “real” potatoes , Five Cup Salad which is 1 cup of pecans, oranges, marshmallow, coconut, sour cream and pineapples (I don’t know why it is called 5 cup salad when there are 6 cups in it), corn (out of the frozen food section), and sugar cookies, we sound like such good cooks don’t we? My Mom, my sisters Olivia, Alaina and I usually make the food, this is one of my favorite things about Christmas, spending time with my family.

The next day after we have made all the food, my Mom, Dad, Olivia, her husband Josh, Alaina, my brother Alex, and I walk across the street to my Aunt’s house, and are greeted with the smiling faces of my uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents. At that point you start to hear people saying things like, “When are we going to eat!?” “I’m starving!” “The food smells so good.” After a few minutes of waiting one of my aunts say “The food is ready!” At that moment everyone runs to the kitchen, acting so excited you would think they hadn’t eaten for days.

When everyone gets to the kitchen my Grandpa says a prayer, thanking God for the family he has blessed us with and the food we are about to enjoy. After this, everyone forms a line, sometimes the line is so long it reaches into the family room. The length of the line varies, because frequently different family members will invite other people to join us for dinner, one time my cousin-in-law brought his step brother from Australia, so you never know who will be there. It usually takes a while to get your food, because everyone is choosing carefully what to eat. There are so many choices, mash potatoes, sweet potatoes, pea salad, rice dressing, ham, rolls, roast and corn are just a few of them. But I don’t mind waiting in line because the people waiting next to me are great company. After everyone gets their food, my cousins, sisters, brother and I head down to the basement, this is practically the only place left to sit in the house, and there are not even enough chairs for everyone, so we all just sit in a big circle on the floor. I have to say the conversations my family and I have during dinner are the best! Sometimes the conversations are about my cousins band The Green Type Writers, or challenging each other to a weight lifting competition after dinner, a lot of times everyone is just telling jokes. But the conversations almost always end with everyone laughing hysterically.

After we finish our dinner, we often have a bench press competition, my cousin Jacob is normally the judge of the competition because everyone knows he would win if he was competing. This time it was close between me and my cousin Jimmie, but I finally beat him. When the competition is over, my cousins and I head up stairs for desert. Sounds like a great idea doesn’t it? Workout then eat desert. When we get up stairs we head over to the desert table where there are sugar cookies, pumpkin pie, brownies, ginger bread men, cheesecake and many other delicious treats, my favorite thing there is probably the sugar cookies made by my Aunt Lydia. Everyone in my family seems to be especially good at making deserts. While we are indulging in desert, my grandpa, uncle or one of my cousins usually reads passages from the Bible, that are relevant to the celebration.

Even though most of my family lives close I don’t get to see a lot of them very often during the year because everyone is so busy. I look forward to Christmas Dinner with my family every year, I love being able to spend time and enjoy a special meal with the people I care about most.