From Akeila Lain

As a child I loved to eat! I would look forward to Sunday dinners, Saturday morning

breakfast, or simply getting home from school in the afternoon to get a snack,

(anything would have been better then the horrendous lunch they provided for all

the children at the elementary school). I come from a long line of family tradition,

everything from family road trips to family cook offs, so its no surprise I had an

interest in cooking growing up. Every holiday my siblings and I pitched in around

the kitchen each cooking a dish for dinner. But me being the pasta-loving girl I am I

would always volunteer to make the baked macaroni and cheese, while my sisters

cooked the turkey, and my brothers baked the desserts. These are times in my life I

would always chariest, in hopes of passing them on to my children one day.

I think my love for eating and cooking stems from always having food in the house,

I think this is due to my fathers philosophy of if we run out of something replace it.

Growing up my siblings and I never fought (over food that is) because it just seemed

like there was ample amounts of food at our disposal. Until this day there’s things

I always have to have in my refrigerator. I remember just going to the fridge after

school and there would always be cold Capri Suns, Hawaiian Punch, or Nesquik

chocolate milk for us to choose from. This went great with our animal crackers and

gummy bears.

Monday’s was always Spaghetti nights, and my

mom always prepared the night before so I

remembered seeing big tubs of Pergo Traditional

tomato sauce in the glass jaw sitting on the top

shelf, along plastic tuba wear full of noodles. This

is how my mother feed us when she worked late.

On the shelf below that you’d find a carton of

eggs, a tub of Country crock’s butter, and every

flavored yogurt I could image at the time (at least

that’s what it felt like to me). On the door you can

bottles of barbeque sauce, and hidden valley

ranch dressing along with Strawberry Jelly.

These are all just some of the things I remembered being in my refrigerator as a

child growing up, things I always had access to eat.