Eat, Darling, Eat 

When I was eight years old, my brother went to Vietnam, and my mother set about what would later be known as the Great Overseas Brownie Mission or GO-BM (no reflection on the brownies, I swear). This meant that she basically endeavored to provide the entire U.S. Army stationed within satellite distance of Saigon with homemade brownies. The North Vi...

On the one hand, I have a label: narcissistic mother. I read books and visit websites while tears roll down my face and my childhood pain gets validated. Those tears drop into buckets of Reese’s ice cream before I ram my fingers down my throat, battling bulimia into its second decade. My eating disorder mimics the emotional landscape I grew up in,...

My Costa Rican mother came to the United States with my Greek father, one toddler, and two children in diapers. Times were hard, and my mother felt lost most of the time, dealing with the customs and culture that were so alien to her. People seemed cold and austere, in contrast to her warm and friendly personality—we appeared to be gypsies to our n...

Food has always been an instrument of dialogue and comparison in my home. My mother came from Padua, where her father was a great cook of traditional Venetian cuisine, and my father was born in Constantinople (he loves to use the name that pre-dated Istanbul) from a Greek mother. For us, food was a moment to be together, talk, and make important de...

Another day of sports training after school. From Monday to Friday, my schedules are set by my teachers and coach; there is always more and more swimming to do. Staying late at the pool to be ready for Nationals championships means following a healthy diet. Arriving back home at 4 p.m., I run to the kitchen and open the pots on the stove to discove...