The Ratatouille Effect

Sometimes it's hard to explain our intense passion for food and all that it entails. There are so many reasons that we enjoy food. In sitting down to write a post about what it is that makes us so passionate I realized I could easily write an entire book.


Meat Pies will always bring me back to our honeymoon

A book on the wonders of food- the preparing, the eating, the sharing, the physical response, the emotional response, the cultural significanses and variances, the tradition, the community building (and sometimes separation), the religious influences, the involvement in ritual, the exploration and inspiration, the want, the need... you can see what I mean. ~takes deep breathe and stretches fingers~

Food is a common ground for every living thing in this world.

As we're in Sacramento with our parents today I started thinking about a very specific response to food. It's what I now refer to as the Ratatouille Effect.



This scene always makes me smile. I'm sure B will appreciate me sharing this with you. B does not ever get emotional about movies. He talks thru the romantic and tragic parts- it drives me insane. Somehow B never interrupts this scene. I swear the first time we watched it I saw his eyes cloud. He was having an emotional moment...during a cartoon! Oh but I understood.

The Ratatouille Effect is the ability of food to bring you back to a specific time, place, person, moment and/or feeling.

It's the way those cookies, maybe even just the smell of them, make you think of Christmas surrounded by warmth and magic. Sometimes it's just the comfort of a dish that you crave. It's chicken soup when you're feeling down. It's how I'll say white cake with strawberry filling and buttercream frosting and someone will remember the moment they fed each other cake on their wedding day. It's the moment when you taste a dish and think to yourself... wow, this tastes just like my grandma makes. It's the way we get teary when that first holiday without out loved one makes us wonder who will make his famous stuffing this Thanksgiving...and will it taste the same? The emotional ties to the physical taste and smell of a dish. Pretty fantastic.

There are so many foods that have this effect on me. Foods that remind me of specific holidays, loved ones and friends, late nights in college, my parents, some of the first meals B cooked for me and places we've explored.

What foods have the ratatouille effect on you?