I remember being four years old, sitting at the table and deciding I hated my mother’s cabbage soup. This could have been a sibling solidarity of rebellion versus our mother, as my nine-year-old sister who sat across from me also declared her distaste for the dish. She refused to eat vegetables on principle. I hated the tomato soup base. Two different people, two different sets of tastebuds, one common enemy: cabbage soup. Our mother sat at the head of the table in the small dining room/kitchen area. Even though we moved around every couple years, the room comes to me as it does for most of my childhood memories—in a fuzzy haze that blurs between fact and fiction. I know now that the one I picture is likely not the same as the one actually there. I can’t even remember if the table was a rectangle or an oval, but I distinctly recall the floor was an off-white yellow. The kind of yellow that you know is dirty but has set too long that it gained a resistance to the all-powerful bleach.                         Occasionally, like this particular time, my biological father (not my sister’s) sat at the other end of the table as we pretended to be a family. I never knew how much adults liked to play “house” using kids as dolls. When we both refused the dish, our mother forced us to sit at the table until the food was gone. Syndel gave in after an hour and was allowed to leave the table. I too attempted to leave several times and was returned each time with my rear burning slightly more with every attempted escape. The soup grew cold. The night waned on. Both adults demanded I eat. I didn’t. 

       I remember the night I discovered my distaste for meatloaf. The table we had at our townhouse in Holmen, Wisconsin was a long rectangular piece that was a light tannish yellow with a darker brown stained diamond in the center. I sat at one head of the table while my sister sat at the other end next to the plant with big green leaves that had been torn to hide its decaying status so only the color green remained. Our mom sat on the long end of the table and served us a rectangular piece of meat covered in ketchup and a side of buttered green beans and corn. This was an unknown food, and Mom loved trying to trick us into eating things we didn’t like. But I knew ketchup was a tomato sauce. It was cabbage stew all over again. Different home, different dish, same shit as usual. Syndel refused to eat her green beans. The corn was fine as the hodgepodge of ground meat in a loaf pan. I loved my veggies, especially the greens, so those were gone, leaving most of the meatloaf behind. Two trips were made to the bathroom to dispose of some of it in the toilet. Looking back, it would’ve been a lot faster to just scarf the loaf, instead of leaving it in my mouth and on my tastebuds as I spat it out in the toilet. In my defense, a fourth-grader’s mind isn’t the smartest in terms of espionage. We sat staring at our plates as our mother finished hers off. She looked at us and said, “You’ll stay there until all the food is gone,” before going upstairs to play RuneScape. With the absence of authority, my sister and I looked at each other, glanced at our plates, then traded them. Our plates were empty. We could leave the table. 

       I remember the first time I heard my mother say the phrase: “If you’re not going to eat the food I make, then you can make your own.” She had caught on to the meatloaf strategy between me and my sister, and she had had enough. But what foods can a nine-year-old make when they don’t know how to cook? At the same light-tan table where my mother and sister ate across from each other eating bowls of Hamburger Helper, I sat between them with a bowl of generic microwaved canned peas drenched in butter and salt. It still is my favorite food to this day, even after getting sick and nauseous following a month straight of eating just peas. But there was a problem—I only knew how to cook peas.  

       I remember my favorite show as a kid. It wasn’t Arthur or Little Bear; it was Hell’s Kitchen. Gorden Ramsey—my at the time idol—led to my dream of being a chef for the majority of my youth—used a stove; so, I should be able to if I ever wanted to be called a wanker by the British legend himself. But what is an unsupervised nine-year-old allowed to cook on the stove? Lunch meat. But I didn’t want to undercook it, or I’d get tapeworms like on that episode of House M.D. So, I cooked it until the edges were burnt; burnt food can’t be raw. Bread is gross, too—it’s too squishy. If I toast it till it starts to turn dark, though, I can then use a butter knife to scrape the burnt sections away till it’s white again. Burnt Buddig Honey Ham sandwiches are for dinner now. 

       I remember the burnt-orange loveseat in the shelter in East St. Louis. The TV would be on a nonstop loop of Lightning McQueen competing for the Piston Cup—my baby brother had an obsession with Cars—so we had his playpen sitting in the living room while the light coming through the bare windows created a glare on the screen. I had snuck a bit of my sandwich, as one would to a puppy, to Caleb, who had just started eating solids. Syndel ate in her “room” while our mother ate in hers. We had no internet in the shelter, so she was playing Tropico and Pizza Chef on her PC. A large Coke, two plain McChickens, with a barbeque sauce for thirty cents extra, for a total of $3.51; a time before inflation when even the homeless could eat Mickey D’s. The Dollar Menu was safer than the East St. Louis Schnucks. 

       I remember my mother’s room in our trailer when we moved to Mascoutah. The walls were yellowed with the smoke from her cigarettes, and I sat on the brown carpet with an upturned cardboard box in front of me to prop up my laptop downloading the latest Cooking Tycoon game. My mother sat at her black desk in the corner of her room dungeoneering on RuneScape. The TV on her brown wooden dresser was playing through our collection of Charmed while we ate bowls of Hamburger Helper and Caleb was in the living room eating his chicken burgers (McChickens) and watching Cars 2. Or, more accurately, Syndel was eating Hamburger Helper while mom had made me a special version: she took a small bowl of ground beef and mixed veggies together with spices before ruining the rest of the meat with the noodles and cheese—I had no idea cinnamon could be used for savory dishes till then. 

       I remember moving onto campus housing. It was a strange transition— especially without a job, friends, or family. I shared a room with a girl named Deb, but we didn’t get on, especially my being a night owl. In the wee hours (2:00 a.m.) I would be on the third-floor east wing common area of the Prairie Hall dormitories. The green plastic couch stuck to my thighs, my shorts riding up while I sat crisscross with one of the tables pulled up to it. The couch was far more comfortable than the chairs provided and less sticky. I could look out to the wilderness the window faced and faintly make out the deer that grazed there. The heat from the red Campbell’s soup bowl burned my legs as I set it atop the crevice of them. Its contents of white rice, canned peas, and teriyaki sauce were the last of the rations I brought to college with no job and no car. I took a bite and cringed at the taste in the solitary silence of the dorm. It was hard to swallow. 

       I remember the fluorescent lights that glowed down on the red booth’s brown table as I ate the bourbon chicken skillet with extra mushrooms (the only good thing they still have on the menu), a side of bacon, toast, and a vanilla milkshake. My soul twin/roommate Mary, sat across from me eating her boneless wings and buffalo chicken wraps from the value menu. The waitress Diane was on the end of the table eating a small plate of fries as she lay down a “draw four” card between the plates. Mary laughed and wiggled in her seat as she placed a “draw four” card on top of that. I begrudgingly wiped the grease from my hands as I drew eight cards, determined to pay them back for the their 1:00 a.m. declaration of war.  

       I remember, though it’s been four or so years, a beige folding table in the living room with a can of Coke on the edge and a plate of oven-baked brown sugar-glazed turkey ham, green beans, and honey-buttered King’s Hawaiian rolls. Mia, my rat terrier, sat on the footstool between me and the TV, looking up at me propped up with pillows on Grandpa’s couch chair watching the latest Supernatural episode. Grandpa was at the bar as always. We don’t share space even though we have lived in the same house for over half a decade. I leaned down when Sam died for probably the tenth time in the series and gave Mia a  piece of ham that she happily devoured before looking at me with those puppy eyes once more. I gave in as both she and I consumed our dinner. 

Tuesday nights are Mary and Lexi nights. Her husband, Ryan, works late, so it’s just the two of us (plus her baby Matthew). On this particular night, I am sitting on the blue couch I built for them. Mary is sitting on her light-blue rug playing Disney Dreamlight Valley with Matthew making strange noises that sound like her cat. Our old black and red bowls are filled with a rice and veggie stir-fry that she cooked up on the stove. Kinda bland as she doesn’t know much about spices beyond salt and pepper, but it still looks good. She breaks out her bread maker and for the first time makes focaccia, full of fresh herbs and olive oil. It pairs well with my fourth blueberry Red Bull of the day. Uh-oh, it looks like Matthew is hungry too. I guess it’s dinner time.