Memories are tricky things.
Some of them are so readily available. Your first date, your wedding, your children's milestones.
Still, many of the memories of the mundane, the ways that we lived as children, or the people that are gone, are only pulled out of storage by certain things. A certain song, a smell, the color of an article of clothing, can send us back through the years, and the story of the time that the memory takes us to becomes clearer and sometimes we can even find ourselves reliving that moment.
Foods can be great reminders of times far back in our memories.
Food is specific to each family. Depending on our culture, the time that we lived, our income, and of course the skills of the people cooking it, every family has a very personal way of feeding itself.
Food is also something that we use to celebrate. The memorable times are so often marked by a special meal or a signature dish.
Christmas might always mean sugar cookies, or maybe it's the eye-rolling reaction to the yearly fruitcake that you remember.
Food is what we use to show people that we care. Meals when someone has a baby, or to comfort the grieving.
We are what we eat, in more ways than we know.
I was very blessed to come from a family that cooked.
My mom and my grandma had a pretty straightforward menu, and it was basic, but there are so many things that I learned from them, and so many memories of times that we all spent together.
I remember mom baking bread in her big brown bread bowl.
She always made "cracked wheat" and she really loved doing it!
My dad took his sandwiches to work for years; cracked wheat, with some kind of meat and cheese, wrapped in waxed paper. I still remember how she folded that waxed paper.
Her bread baking was something that made her feel close to the people that she was feeding.
Mostly we took store-bought bread to school, but that fresh baked bread would be there when we got home, and we could toast it and top it with butter and cinnamon and sugar.
I can smell that wonderful smell in my mind.
My grandma, Maggie, has also provided me with long remembered foods that were a part of spending time at her house.
She would make white rice, plain, and pile on the butter and salt and pepper. For some reason I have never been able to replicated the flavor and texture, but I do remember exactly how it tasted.
She would make the most delicious left-over chicken sandwiches. On white bread, and in a baggie, which mom never did (remember the waxed paper?) . Taking her lunches to school after spending the night was such a treat. She would always put in cookies that she had baked, and some kind of chips.
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| Grandma Maggie's kitchen 1960ish |
Mom's apple pie is one thing that I really did learn how to make just like her. I am so glad! I can bake those and pass the love on to my own kids. That is a pie that is just unlike anything else. I enjoy baking them for the eating, but also for the remembering.
There are also things that our family used to do that now seem so special, and at the time I didn't appreciate them enough.
We used to pack up the cars and drive over an hour to Hurricane Ridge, which is in the Olympic National Park. We didn't pack a picnic lunch like everyone else. No, Grandma and Grandapa and Mom and Dad would pack up the kerosene stoves and bacon and eggs and coffee, and take it all up there early in the morning to fix breakfast on the mountain.
Smelling the bacon frying and the eggs spattering was just heavenly. It was usually cold up there, and grandma would always pack hot chocolate, or she would let us have coffee half and half with milk. I think I developed my love of coffee at those special times.
We would also pack meals to take to the beach. Cheese and crackers, hard salami, chips, cookies and the otherwise forbidden orange soda or root beer.
I think that it would be a very hard thing to hold on to memories without the sensory ties to those times.
I am so glad that my family went to the trouble of making the food so that we could make the memories.
There are a few things that I hope my kids remember:
Little smokey rolls and Christmases.
Angel food cake, with fluffy white frosting, and birthdays.
My mom's apple pie and family gatherings.
Buffalo Chicken Chili and eating dinner together.
Grilled chicken and warm summer evenings.
None of these foods are fancy, but they link us with love.
