Bringing Ben home has me thinking about food a lot lately. Being in a different country made me realize just how much comfort we people get from food. At the end of our week-stay in Addis, and after a week of eating almost entirely Ethiopian food, I was in a restaurant that brought me an international menu with a “chicken sandwich” on it. They brought it out and it was grilled chicken breast on toast, and it tasted so good and so “familiar” I could’ve cried!

It wasn’t that I didn’t like the Ethiopian food…in fact there were quite a few things I did enjoy. But it just wasn’t “my food”. It was kind of like when I went on a cruise with my sister in high school…we spent a week eating all of these fancy meals on the ship, and when we stopped in Puerto Rico and found a McDonalds, it was the best tasting meal we had the whole trip.

Seriously, I do have a point here. Being in a place where the food was “foreign” and unfamiliar to me, really helped me to empathize with our new son. With every new meal I have served him, I have tried to find something spicy for him or some kind of bread that I know he will like or SOMETHING that he will enjoy. Josh even tried one of the imitation injera and dora wat recipes, but the result was…well… let’s just say…disappointing to all involved.

When our Amanda came home from Korea at age two, it was just a week before Easter. Easter morning came and that girl would not touch the candy. You could not have paid her to eat a chocolate or a jellybean. You would have thought we were killing her. All she wanted was her white rice, and she was happy as a clam. We laughed the next year on how we had “ruined her”, as she was shoving candy in as fast as the rest of them. She doesn’t believe me now when I tell her that there was a time when she didn’t like sweets.

Anyway, I think that it is really important for newly adopted children to have some sort of comfort food. I know that “cooking cultural recipes” is one of the cliché things many of us put on our transracial parenting plans, but it’s something we really should do. Food is a huge part of culture, and the tastes and smells of familiar favorite foods are so comforting. To truly embrace our child’s or children’s culture(s) pretty much requires expanding our home menu.


Luckily for me, the little boy I thought was going to be a very picky eater has chosen peanut butter and jelly as his new favorite food and he can eat his weight in pasta. He loves cereal and milk and “gogurt” in a tube and thinks this new thing called “desert” is a really good deal. He still doesn’t like French fries or anything potato, and won’t eat much of anything fried either. Talk to me in a year…I am sure we’ll ruin him too.

In Ethiopia I LOVED watching him roll his injera and stuff his cheeks full. He ate so much of the stuff while we were in Addis we watched him in amazement and wondered where he put it all. Injera and dora wat and so many others will always be a part of who he is and where he is from.

People all over the world comfort themselves with food, celebrate with food and identify their culture with certain dishes. It's an improtant aspect of any place and of any culture.

And that is why there is a half-eaten jar of Kimchi (Korean cabbage) in my fridge, why we treat ourselves to Vietnamese egg rolls and other dishes, why I’ll soon be making loaf upon loaf of Irish soda bread and why we often eat corn bread, fried chicken and other Southern favorites. It’s also why Josh is back to the drawing board, determined to master his injera.

So go to the library or shop online and find yourself some new cook books. You can also search online for recipes, and if you are really lucky, you may have cultural cooking classes available where you live. If you're like my husband you'll enjoy learning to cook new things, and if you're like me, you'll enjoy eating new things. :) Most importantly, you'll be incorporating a piece of your child's culture into your family.