Growing Up Between Two Tables

I grew up between two very different tables.

At one table—my immediate family's table—it was a no-meat house- filled with vegetarian cookbooks, homemade spinach patties and strict no-sugar-and-no-chocolate rules.

At the other—my grandmother's table—there was homemade tomato sauce (or gravy, as my family says) cooking all day, usually with some type of sausage or meatball, Italian bread on the counter, and enough food to feed anyone who happened to stop by. No one was ever turned away from her table. She would happily feed the entire neighborhood...if she liked you!

I never realized how unusual that was until I got older.

I was raised vegetarian from the very beginning. My father, a Seventh-day Adventist, had already been vegetarian when he met my mother. For him, it was a way of life. For my mother, who had grown up Italian Catholic, it was a completely new world.

After converting to my father's religion and becoming vegetarian herself, she was concerned about how to cook for my brother and me. In her pursuit to learn, she took vegetarian cooking classes. To this day, some of my favorite meals are recipes she learned during that time.

And since most of the people I was surrounded by were also vegetarian, I didn't think anything of it.

But then I would go to my grandmother's house, and it was like I had stepped into a completely different world.

Her home was full of pasta, meat, and seafood. There were lots of desserts and other amazing things that weren't allowed at my house. Walking into my grandmother's house felt like stepping into another country. The smells were different. The food was different. The rules were definitely different.

There was always something simmering on the stove and always something sweet waiting on the counter. And my grandmother always made sure there was a smaller pot on the stove, cooking right next to the big pot of sauce—a meatless version made just for me.

Even though I never ate half of the things my grandmother made, I still spent a lot of time in her kitchen helping her. So I was always around meat, even as a vegetarian, and I was never really bothered by it. It was simply something I didn't eat.

I grew up learning how to cook in these two worlds.

And these are the memories I think of when I think of home, food, and love.

Somewhere between those two tables is where Thyme & Flame began.