In the Sanders extended family, food is one of the bonds that keep us close together. Oftentimes, food is just the excuse we use to get together no matter the occasion. For me personally, my favorite occasion is Packer games. Packer games in our family is like a religion. We all get our jerseys on, clean feverishly beforehand, cook food and relax for three hours on a Sunday. It doesn’t matter if we all were in a big family fight just an hour before the game, we all come together to support our team. For a game at noon, my family usually starts cooking at about 8-9 am. For over a year, my mom would make the same thing every gameday: a chicken, bacon, ranch and barbecue homemade pizza. It may sound good, but there are no words that could do this dish justice. It was the greatest single food I had ever eaten. For a long long time, I looked forward to every game just because of the pizza.

My mom always made it, but I always wanted to learn how. Basically, you need a special pan, apply some dough, but like, two cups of bbq sauce on top of the cut chicken along with homemade ranch and top it of with mounds of cheese. We used a very wide variety of cheeses, and I think that thats the reason I liked it so much. I could have eaten an entire pan myself every Sunday. Eventually everything came full circle because I started making it on special occasions. The first time I had ever made it, I made it for a girl I had asked to prom my senior year. I wasn’t sure if she would like it, but I knew that the pizza brought me so much joy and I wanted to

share that with her. Needless to say, she said yes and my guess was that it was the pizza that sealed the deal. Food can be a way to anyones heart, and it brought me so much joy to be able to share my enjoyment of the pizza with someone. Somehow, that pizza had made its way not just into my taste buds, but into my heart. Thats the power that food has on a Sanders. Food isn’t just sustenance, its a way to tell someone that you care. Its a way of providing comfort to someone. My family doesn’t talk all that much, but somehow every holiday, as long as there is food, my family meets up and we all have a great time. Food is memory. Whenever I think about my family and some of the hilarious moments we have had over the years, I can remember the smells and tastes of the day. From packer games to the real holidays, food is what drives the sanders family together.