“You Never Learn Until You Experiment”

Nostalgia is a term that I find best expressed as the moment you are finally reunited with your favorite homemade meal. Feeling that sense of harmony as flashbacks from your childhood flow through your mind and seem as if that day was only yesterday. 

The meal that brings that ecstatic feeling for me is a pasta dish that my mother used to always make to cheer me up. The pasta dish entirely consists of angel hair pasta, butter, spices, and lemon juice. She occasionally adds shrimp or vegetables into the mix as well. My mother added, “I thought about foods that I liked and that I thought would go well together and I just put them together. You never learn until you experiment.” Whatever way she would make it I always ate as much as I possibly could, and I still do. 

I recently asked her what her favorite memory is of this dish and she expressed, “Cooking the dish with you and seeing you happy.” Not only is this dish my favorite, but it’s also my older brother Brandon’s favorite. My mother added, “It’s still Brandon’s favorite dish, he always wants me to make it for him.”

This pasta dish isn’t my favorite because of the taste of it, but instead it’s my favorite because of the time spent making it with my mom. Doing things with people you love always brings you closer to those you love.