For mediator/mother, food has proved to be the tie that binds nibbles

By Theresa Curry
Correspondent

THERE'S MOTIVATION, AFFECTION, even reconciliation to be found at the table, needs as basic as the salt in the shaker and the bread in the basket. That's what Karen Asaro has experienced with her own family and friends and with clients in her mediation practice.

First the family: "The evening meal was an important event while I was growing up," Asaro said. Family members reported on their day and planned the next. Along with the familiar conversation were some not-so-familiar dishes. "I spent time in Germany as a child, so trying different foods was always an adventure," she said. Her father's Air Force career also took the family to Ohio, Maine and Langley Air Force Base in Hampton. Asaro settled in Sandbridge in 1984 with her daughter.

Wherever she lived, Asaro cooked. As a young girl, she graduated from baking cookies to fixing family dinners for parents who both worked. She continued the family mealtime tradition with her daughter and expanded it to include Kendra's Norfolk Academy basketball team. The Bulldogs would come for "psyche breakfasts" before their games, and Asaro had fun finding new recipes for breakfast casseroles, pancakes and French toast for the teenage athletes.

It's an interest that's added new energy and dimension to her life. While at a conference in Lake Tahoe, she found the gourmet kitchen in her condo so irresistible that she invited her colleagues over for a meal, straight from a cookbook she found of Tahoe-area restaurant favorites. When Kendra played on Emory University's basketball team, Asaro borrowed an Atlanta kitchen from the team captain to fix Thanksgiving dinner for the homesick Eagles. "It was challenging since this college student only used the microwave in her kitchen and the usual cooking utensils were absent," Asaro said. "It was still great fun."

Asaro always knew she was dispensing encouragement and support along with the meals and the mountains of oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip and snicker doodle cookies that fueled the athletes. Years later, one of Kendra's high school friends called from college to ask for a favorite chicken Parmesan recipe.

An incident from Asaro's work as a mediator caused her to reflect on the powerful implications of sharing a meal. "All mediators know that fostering relationships across the table can result in more creative agreements," she said.

She was asked to mediate between two rival teenage cliques whose conflict had gotten so heated that it disrupted the school. Both the students and their parents were required to participate and, as Asaro expected, the first meeting was very tense. Parents asked whether they could bring food for the next meeting, scheduled for the early evening, and the group decided on pot luck.

The second meeting, begun by sharing food, was more productive, Asaro said. "Food is an endless topic of conversation, and suddenly they found that they had things in common. They had similar food likes and dislikes. Mediation helped these two groups

figure out a way to coexist peacefully, and I believe sharing food helped play a part in the resolution."

Asaro shops for produce in season at Cromwell's on New Bridge Road and Henley Farms in Pungo, both in Virginia Beach. During the summer, she gets fresh seafood from Bonney's Seafood Market at the corner of Princess Anne and Sandbridge roads. For an early July dinner with friends, she served shrimp and crab; melon with prosciutto and

Parmesan; snow peas, corn and zucchini; and a strawberry-kiwi tart with a macadamia nut crust.

Asaro works full time, has private clients and teaches a night class. She shares some ideas for making healthful, homemade meals part of a busy life: