Meals and mathematics . . .

I have just finished prepping ingredients for supper tonight.  It got me thinking about the number of meals I have prepared since I got married in 2004.  Breakfasts, lunches, suppers.  Food, food, and more food.

I request your indulgence for a moment while I do some math.   If I made three meals a day every day since July of 2004, approximately how many meals have I made.  It works out to 1095 meals per year.  Over eight years, that's 8,760.  If I live to age 70, and am still making meals, it works out to 47,085.  Keeping in mind that we do occasionally eat out and visit others where meals are prepared by someone else, it might be around 45,000 as a guess.

If I do the math based only on say a 26 year time span (up to age twenty for my youngest child) it calculates out to 28,470.  28,000+ opportunities to feed my children.  Balancing out fruits and vegetables, carbs and proteins.  Opportunities to teach them to make healthy food choices.  Opportunities to nourish, not just their bodies, but their souls.

Food is fuel, but as a momma, it's love too.  I love my kids and I want them to be healthy.  For each of the opportunities I have to place food in front of them I am thinking about their body's needs.  What they need to grow.  What they need to make their little brains work at optimum potential.

My heart melts when my son says to me, “mommy, that was the best breakfast/lunch/supper ever!”  Even if he does say it almost every day or two, and the meal just happened to be vegetable broth with veggies and an egg or two dropped into it and a handful of noodles.  I know that I have just checked another meal off of my 28,000, and it feels good.

Sitting at the table, focusing attention on each child.  Letting them talk about their day.  Giving them opportunities to guide suppertime conversations.  Feeding their souls with words and actions and grace.  And sometimes it feels like a three ring circus or dinner and a show, but we get through it and I have three more meals tomorrow to have another go at it.

And so feeding my children is a loving act.  I have to think about and plan and make positive choices because I love them.  And so I make them eat their vegetables – at least half anyway.  I can't imagine being a mom in a place where I could not feed my children.  And so I am grateful that I live in a place where I have access to fresh fruit and vegetables, and rice, and chicken.   A place where my husband has a job and we can afford to get those necessities for our children.  Counting my blessings daily.