Thanks for cooking, mom

I didn't know until I was about 7 years old that spaghetti sauce or apple sauce came in jars. It blew my mind, both at the convenience of it and at the awful, sugary taste of it. All of our spaghetti sauce and apple sauce took half a day to make, and my dad got his orange juice every morning by plugging in the juicer and juicing the oranges on the counter (we lived in Florida).

I also didn't know that freezer meals existed until I was in 7th grade and started babysitting for the 3 kids across the street. Their parents were the first overweight people I had ever met and everything was different over there. Their dishwasher had to be rolled across the floor and hooked up to the sink with a hose and they used the term "BMs" when referring to the kids' poops. It was all so bizarre. But especially the bags and bags of pre-made food that lived in the freezer.

It just inherently didn't make sense to me. I had no concept of health back then, but the frozen pieces of breaded everything just seemed wrong.

Even now I get surprised at the things you can buy in the grocery store because my instinct is just to make it myself. Now the motivation is more health-related, but even without that, my childhood informed the way I view food. What is and isn't food and what should and shouldn't be consumed.

Thanks for cooking, mom.