Here's Hoping You've Found Your "Belgian Croquette"!

I think it's become abundantly clear to me at this point in my life that I have a near-unhealthy obsession with food. Not unhealthy as in “I-eat-until-I-puke unhealthy” or “I-eat-with-blatant-disregard-for-my-physique unhealthy”, but I've found that food dominates a major part of my life. I read about it, I blog about it, I dedicated weekends in college to filming a cooking show, I trade recipes with my boss, and I've never tired of it. I spend a good part of my days chatting about - you guessed it – food, with anyone who will listen. It was in one of these food-centric conversations that I remembered what may have been my first "food-inspiration" memory: eating croquettes with my brother in Belgium where we grew up. In a nutshell: a tiny potato nugget spawned this obsession that has come to define a big part of who I am.

My family had this weekly Tuesday tradition while living in Mons, Belgium where we'd get together with my parents' friends and go out for a huge steak dinner. It was on one of these occasions where I tried croquettes for the first time – I was maybe 5 years old. Croquettes are, more or less, the French equivalent of what we know to be tater-tots, so you can imagine how many handfuls I would eat as a child. They were always crispy and golden brown on the outside with a smooth, mashed potato type filling on the inside. And man, were they good! So, at the ripe old age of 5, I found inspiration in food and would try to figure out how to make them at home whenever my mom had leftover mashed potatoes. I didn't perfect the Belgian croquette of my childhood until I was 19 years old. Think about that for a minute: I spent 14 years trying to perfect a tater-tot! This, sadly, is the story of my life!

Now that my initial foodie experience with croquettes in Belgium seems a lifetime ago, I have come to realize that my obsession isn’t tied to the actual act of eating. Food, for me, will always be tied to memory. What I was really looking for in the 14 years of wasting mashed potatoes wasn’t simply a fried nugget of divine tastiness, it was an homage to something I cherished and looked forward to as a child, a little bite of something that instantly brought me back to a much simpler, more innocent existence. Croquettes, Mom’s “road trip riblets”, fried chicken gizzards and hearts, pommes frites (eaten with a tiny, plastic, two-tined fork), swirled Belgian chocolate seashells, perfectly crusty bread, Kinder Surprise, even surprisingly good bowling alley fried chicken: these are all foods that have very distinct memories tied to them that will forever transport me back to my childhood. Would these foods be as enticing to me now, as a reluctant grown-up, had they not already reserved a special place in my heart? Would I still bristle with excitement at the sight of a basket full of chicken innards fresh from the fryer if they hadn’t already been engrained in my memory?

Now that I am “grown up”, the overwhelming messes I make in the kitchen have one specific purpose: to result in something truly memorable. Now that I am “grown up”, I appreciate the fact that cooking, eating, and drinking are not things that should be taken for granted, that trying a new restaurant is not something to be taken lightly. Anyone can slap a piece of ham on a slice of white bread or grab a soggy burger-like thing at a drive-through window, but if we must eat (and we all do), don’t we owe it to ourselves to at least try to make it memorable? My answer to this is: yes, we absolutely owe it to ourselves. Our days are packed with meetings, errands to run, traffic snarls, being always on the go, being busy busy busy. But, at the end of the day, you might come home to find that your husband has made you your own “childhood croquette”, and miraculously, with that first bite, all of the troubles that come with being a hard-working superhero will simply melt away in the intoxicating memory of the very first time you tried that silly little potato nugget, in the company of the ones you love, at a time when an Outlook calendar was the furthest thing from your mind.

Unfortunately, since my brother and parents are the only ones who can truly relate to my childhood croquette, I am left with only one choice: to share my experiences with those who care to listen. It is with this in mind that I will attempt to share, through this blog, what I've loved, hated, and found inspiring throughout my ongoing attempt to slow things down and enjoy life and all the tasty things it has to offer. It is my hope that others will be willing to share their experiences with me too, so I may glean inspiration from their stories and continually seek out ways to write my own stories. Food is memorable, even more so if you have others to share it with. So here’s to creating new memories with the ones you love!

Mangez bien,

KZH