The theater of abundance
My childhood memories are inseparable from my grandmother's cooking. It was a theater of abundance, a permanent show of culinary force. I can still see her, bustling around in front of her oven, adding butter everywhere, pouring heavy cream with a generosity that seemed limitless. For her, cooking was an act of resistance against the harshness of the world. Each dish had to be rich, overflowing, saturated with flavor and calories. It was his way of telling us that we were safe, that famine was far away.
But this abundance came at a price. It was inseparable from a massive consumption of sugar and flour. Russian cakes, blinis, pirojkis... everything was an excuse for excess blood sugar. In his mind, health was synonymous with plumpness and heavy satiety. It was a worldview forged by past deprivations, an emotional response to a tragic history. Love went through a full plate, to the point of suffocation.
Fear transformed into a gift
Looking back, I understand that this generosity was a fear transformed into a gift. My grandmother had experienced ration tickets and endless queues. For her, visible abundance was the only tangible proof of success. She could not design a kitchen of measure, because measure was too much like deprivation. It was survival psychology applied to gastronomy. Each spoonful of sugar was a victory over lack, each piece of bread an insurance against oblivion.
This mentality has permeated an entire generation. We grew up with the idea that eating 'well' meant eating 'too much'. But at 46, I had to face the reality of my own body. I realized that this historic abundance, so precious to my grandmother's soul, had become poison to my modern metabolism. I had to learn to separate love from excess, memory from illness. It is a work of deconstruction necessary to survive our own heritage.
The lucid tribute
Honoring your ancestors does not mean repeating their mistakes. I can recognize the value of my grandmother's love without inflicting the same blood sugar diet on myself. I can keep the butter, because it is a noble and protective fat. I can keep the cream, because it provides softness and satiety. But I can, and I must, reject the sugar and refined flours that polluted his recipes. It’s a lucid homage: I keep the intention, I change the execution.
This distinction is the key to my freedom. I no longer feel guilty for not eating like her. On the contrary, I feel that I am continuing his work by adapting it to the truth of my time. She wanted me to be strong and healthy; today, this involves rigorous low-carb discipline. My kitchen has become a place of dialogue with her, where I show her that we can be generous with nutrients without being destructive with hormones. Memory is a force when it is illuminated by reason.
The efficiency that nourishes
I redefined culinary love. It is no longer visible abundance, it is efficiency that truly nourishes. To love someone is to give them what will make them stronger, clearer, more resilient. It's offering him stable energy rather than fleeting pleasure followed by a fall. My cooking has become sober, precise, but still deeply nourishing. I look for density rather than volume. I look for the truth of the product rather than the artifice of the sweet taste. It is a form of higher respect for oneself and others.
At 46, I feel closer to the essence of my grandmother than ever. She was a woman of character, a survivor. By choosing the dietary discipline, I find his temperament. I am no longer the victim of my desires, I am the mistress of my metabolic destiny. Love is structure, not chaos. My table is a reflection of this rediscovered order. We eat there to live, to shine, to last. It is the abundance of health, the only one that really matters.
Honor and evolve
We can honor our past without being prisoners of it, transforming the heritage of abundance into the wisdom of rightness.
I invite you to look at your own culinary memories with kindness but without complacency. Identify what, in your tradition, builds you up and what destroys you. Dare to modify the recipes of your ancestors to make them compatible with your life. Do not see this as a break, but as a necessary evolution. Health is the greatest tribute you can pay to those who came before you. ¡Priyatnogo appetite e viva a memória lúcida!
