Tasia’s Table. Tasia Malakasis

Чтение книги онлайн.

      I have a tradition at my table. It is my personal take on saying the blessing or raising one’s glass with a few words at the beginning of a meal. It is inclusive and communal, as everyone at the table or standing in wait for a buffet brunch is required to participate. It is also a sign of respect to the cook and to the abundance we are so very fortunate to have. At my house, around my table, we say “Three Things.” Before the first fork is raised, everyone, whether it is only my son and I or thirty guests, goes in turn to say the three things he or she is thankful for.

      Ever since my son could speak he has said his three things before eating. And always, to this day, it has been the same three things— “I am thankful for you, me, and the beautiful day.”

      I cannot recall the exact moment, but I believe the tradition of Three Things started at a time when I was reexamining my routine behaviors. I was a new mother of a young son and wanted to be very conscious of how he would grow up at the table— how the ceremonies of partaking of a meal could and would shape his life.

      I had been particular, if not downright zealous, about food traditions for a long time before I became a mother, however. In fact, my thoughts and interests orbited around food well before I was self-aware enough to realize that it was my “passion.”

       Passion-driven pursuit

      Calling my interest in food, and its tradition and culture, a passion is, I think, an adequate description. If passion is “a strong or extravagant fondness or desire,” then that is my bent toward food. I learned early that food meant love. I learned this from my grandmother (as a lot of us do, no doubt). I dotted my early life’s landscape with food-centric thoughts: cooking for my boyfriends’ families— winning not just the boy’s heart but the entire clan’s— reading food-centric books, and following chefs and food writers in the same way that some teenagers follow rock stars. Yet I never thought about food as a career choice. I just didn’t think that my “interest” could be coined as anything like a passion or a calling.

      Now I am at home, both literally and figuratively, with my pursuit of food, with how it shapes my life and the lives around me, with the friends I have made, and how I have settled into this interest, this self-proclaimed passion. Beyond being comfortable with it, I hold sacred the power of food; how we share it shapes our world in ineffable ways. Through my journey I have become not only a mother concerned with her child’s food traditions— like saying the Three Things— but a producer of a food item that is served at tables across the country. What a responsibility! What a beautiful responsibility.

      When I first became a cheesemaker, I was asked what I ultimately wanted to achieve: what was my five-year plan, what was my goal? Those were great questions and ones that took a good deal of thought to answer, because I had to ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” I became a cheesemaker primarily because it is fun. I find immense joy in it because it feeds me— both literally and figuratively— and because I get to share that joy with so many people through the products I create. Those are the same reasons I cook and share food at my table. At the beginning of a meal or even before, as I start cooking, I think of that wonderful gift.