LOVE IS A FOUR COURSE MEAL

Consuming love for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert.

Breakfast used to be the most important meal of the day. I don’t eat breakfast anymore; I don’t have time. Everything is happening at once. Space and time, which were once meant for family, were eaten away by work with due dates. But there was once a time when breakfast was for the four of us, not homework. We would gather around the kitchen table and eat together. Its marbled space wasn’t for sheets of paper and work; the table was for my mom’s special pancakes, glazed with honey and fruit. The morning was for gratitude and for asking about what you wanted to do in the day — a gift, in truth, to peacefully talk about your plans with the people who love you most and whom you love even more. Somewhere along the years, I turned “what I wanted to do for the day” into “what I wanted to be” and ran with it. Breakfasts are still like that sometimes, but rarely; everyone is too busy. Yet now, with school over and the lingering anticipation of living alone, I would rather sit with a complete table of four than by myself at the kitchen table with three vacant chairs. Being present was once so easy. It was a present in itself.

My grandmother from my mother's side was famous for her food. Anytime we would have a lunch gathering, as a child I would hear them compliment her and speak of her food as if it were steeped in gold and made of their truest desires — too good to be true, they had to know the recipe. And so they would come again, and time and time again, anytime they were invited. They would joke and laugh about how they came for her food and not her humorous husband, my grandpa, or their company.

My grandma doesn't cook anymore, but people still talk about her food. Every time I see them reminisce, you see their eyes close, and they smile like they can still almost taste it. But as I grow older, I realize that maybe it wasn't the food and the flavorful nostalgia, but perhaps you can still taste the love. It was never about the food; it was the love she had for cooking, and more importantly, the people she was cooking for that made her food so special. The truth is… love truly was always the secret ingredient passed on for generations. Her hours spent in the kitchen writing her recipes in cookbooks weren't silly habits but perhaps a diary of love she wanted to share with my sister and me — for my mother to understand whether to put a teaspoon of kindness or a cup of wholesome love. It was a language she was sharing with us.

This epiphany has struck me in the midst of leaving for university, and spending these late nights as a goodbye to my friends one by one, I think of all the times I would cancel plans to study and work, just to end up procrastinating. But the funny thing is I don’t remember a single day of studying — just them. And it's that bittersweet truth that makes me want to turn back time to the dinners we would have, each restaurant we caused havoc in. I notice now that there is so much appreciation for something once it's about to end, and we have so much to say about why we are grateful for the years we spent together, but never said it until now. I now miss the dinners I didn’t get to attend and the little jokes I never got to hear because I didn’t have time. I yearn for the fullness of the meals I never got to share with them at dinner and still taste the ones I did.

I tell you about my family breakfasts, my grandmother's lunches, the goodbyes to the people I love over dinner, and the sweetness of each of these truths, because we hold so much love in our hearts yet are scared to feel and let it seep into our daily conversation, the meals we eat, and make for others. Why don’t we love the way we used to as children — with everything, whole, and never the notion of “too much?” Why don’t I eat breakfast every morning? After all, it’s supposed to be the most important meal of the day. Maybe I should start. Maybe you should too.

What is love, if not making time — even if it feels like we have none left on our plates?

Guest Essay

By Talia Allouba

Published October 26, 2025