Favorite Food Memory

My mother’s vegetable garden is where it all started. Outside growing in the rich brown soil was the beginning of my favorite meal. The home to the roots of the bright green and red peppers that would pop in my mouth, that grew right next to the gigantic tomatoes.  These ingredients along with many others were the ones that made my favorite meal complete. This meal is something that makes me feel at home, in a place that makes me comfortable. I remember as a small child I would help my mother in the garden picking the vegetables that would soon be chopped and diced before being thrown into the huge metal pot on the stove. She would show me how to pick out the peppers that would be the right size and the tomatoes that did not have bruises on them. She would carefully help me pick the lettuce and make sure that I did not break every leaf. Whether it was rain or shine we always took our time and it was something that we could share together. As I got older, she did not need to teach me what vegetables to pick, and the silences would grow larger as my as did my age, but this was something that we would always do together.

            Picking the items from the garden was just the beginning of what made this meal special. Lugging all of them inside in a huge basket I would plop them down on our kitchen table. This table is not just an ordinary table though. The table was old and wooden with many scratches and marks on it so my mother painted it.  She painted the table to make it look like there is a checkered table cloth on it. The perfect one inch by on inch blue and white squares that alternated filled the entire table. Each square measured to perfection and painted so meticulously. Not only was this just a hand crafted table that sat in the corner of our kitchen but it had a matching bench that fit flawlessly with it. The bench as well had the same kind of design to match the table. This table was the place that only the four members of my family could all sit together comfortably and there was no big extra space that made it feel cold. This set of furniture was the first thing that made our kitchen so unique.

            I would sit at the table for hours helping my mother chop the vegetables into tiny pieces that would soon be added to the pot. This was a one of the only jobs that my mother would let me do because it was something she knew I could not mess up, and I was okay with that. As I would sit on the bench I would watch her while she would stand at the off white counter as she would prepare the other ingredients. Our counter was something that was not typically in other kitchens either. It was the same size on both sides of the extremely oversized sink. This sink was not your normal size though; when I say oversized I mean it. When my brother and I were little we would sit on each side of the counter and wash our feet off in it after a long day of playing outside. Then one side of the counter was the home to all of the different shapes of cutting boards including a pig, a paint pallet, and a shoe. My mother was always one for unique looking kitchen items. The pig cutting board is something that my mother will probably keep until the day she dies, and this is not the only pig that you see in our kitchen. She has a whole collection of objects that are pigs. Our towels, salt and pepper shakers, napkins, place mats, pictures, coasters and more all have pigs on them. This is another thing that makes the kitchen in my house something special and not just your ordinary kitchen.

            As she would assemble all of the other ingredients such as the beans and the cilantro you could always hear the bubbles from the pasta boiling almost over the top on the stove. Our stove has a painting that hangs right above it that is something I have never seen anywhere else. My mother being an artist painted it herself. A picture of a large metal pot sat on the same table that was in our kitchen in the painting. Then coming from every direction there were vegetables flying down into the pot that were all different colors. The background of the picture is a deep purple that draws your eyes into a small saying written in tiny black cursive letters which reads “Home is where the heart is, and the heart is always warmer in the kitchen”. I never really understood what this saying meant or where it came from but it was one that I would always remember because my mother had written it in the bottom left corner of this painting.

            After the pasta had become warm and soft we would drain it and add it to the pot full of sweet red onions, chopped celery, crispy red peppers, a million black beans and tons of diced tomatoes. Then the added spices such as ground cumin and salt and pepper which made my mouth always water would be sprinkled and dashed on top to give this meal that special something. All mixed together I would scoop some into a giant bowl, probably enough for at least two or three servings, and I would add shredded cheddar cheese all across the top. The heat from the hot black bean chili with penne pasta would instantly melt the cheese. Sitting at that kitchen table with my mom, dad and brother all eating together was something that I would always cherish. But it was the atmosphere and the experience that I got while making this meal that made it one that would be close to my heart forever. Those hours spent in the garden picking vegetables to perfection to sitting at the carefully painted kitchen table dicing every vegetable would make the memories of this meal special. This was something that my mom and I could always call our own, but something that in the end could always eat as a family.

Recipe For Black Bean Chili with Penne Pasta

Ingredients

12 ounces dry whole grain penne pasta, uncooked

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup chopped red onion

1/4 cup chopped celery

1/4 cup chopped red bell pepper

1 tablespoon finely chopped jalapeno pepper

1/2 teaspoon minced garlic

2 can (15 oz each) Ranch Style® Black Beans, drained, rinsed

1 can (15 oz each) Hunt's® Tomato Sauce

1 can (14.5 oz each) Hunt's® Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes, undrained

2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 cup Shredded Cheddar Cheese