Here we are again.
It’s the unsung day after Christmas. The beginning of the end of another frenetic, exhausting, fun-if- you-were-fortunate, depressing-if- you-weren’t holiday season.
And after the extensive, elaborate thrill-ride of a meal you pulled off last night (not to mention the 5 pounds you’ve gained on peanut brittle and hot apple cider in the weeks since Thanksgiving) the last thing you really want to do on this, the wrapping-paper-littered, cookie- crumb-dusted day after, is sidle up to the kitchen counter, forge a sensible breakfast, and share it with your family who, if you’re normal, probably drove you crazy the past few days.
But get up, make breakfast and share it with your family is exactly what you must do.
Because breakfast today — even if it’s just buttered toast and black coffee — is far more important than last night’s feast, no matter how perfect, or catastrophic, it was.
Food is like family. There are high points, like crown roasts of pork and caviar canapes and Lady Baltimore cakes. There are low points, like fallen souffles and burnt pie crusts and overcooked pastas.
But in the balance, the long view, it’s not the exceptional meals or the epic disasters that matter. Not really.
Food matters because of its day-in, day-out ubiquity — the fact that it’s always present, even when it’s not actually there. This is what makes food so essential to who we are.
Same goes for a family. Elaborate weddings, tear-jerking graduations, yearly second-cousin-twice-removed reunions — these aren’t what define a family. Not really. It’s the shared burden of mundane household chores, the daily shouting match over hot water for the shower, the hours spent together slogging through bumper-to-bumper traffic jams — it is these that tell the truth.
I was listening to the radio the other day while Nigella Lawson, the exceptionally successful food writer- turned-television-personality-slash- cookbook author with the hypnotic upper-crust British accent, was being interviewed. She said (and she’ll forgive me if I paraphrase here, as I was racing through the intersection of Speer Boulevard and Colfax and didn’t have my reporter’s notebook open at the time) that if the most important thing in your home is food, then there’s something wrong with your home.
She’s right.
Inescapable, food plays a million roles. It is a source of nourishment. It is a chore. It is a hobby, a competition, a diversion, an offering, a vice. It defines traditions, signals occasions, soothes senses, even acts as a medium for artistic expression.
But food only matters, really matters, because of its unique, exquisite ability to bring us together, in celebration and melancholy and hope, day after day after day.
Including, especially, today.
Tucker Shaw: 303-954-1958 or dining@denverpost.com
