BS: Memories Associated With Food

Subject: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Azizi
Date: 12 Aug 06 - 04:33 PM

Specific foods may be associated with memories-good or bad-of childhood, or adulthood, or people, places, and things.

Do you have any food memories that you want to share?

If so, you can post them in this thread.

I'll start off in the next post with a memory of mine.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Azizi
Date: 12 Aug 06 - 05:13 PM

Ny maternal grandfather & grandmother have had a very significant influence on my life. If I had to rank which grandparent had the most influence, it would be my grandfather. He was the President of the Deacon Board of the church my family attended. And he was the Chairman of some county church organization for years and years. Sometimes he would take me along when he traveled on Saturdays or in the summer weekdays to one church conference or event or another.
I remember sitting and watching him speak in public. And I remember thinking, I'd like to do this too. And in part because of his role modeling, I do my share of public speaking.

I loved going to my grandparent's house. The living room was filled with books-in book cases and on tables. These books were not for show. They were read-I think more by my grandfather than my grandmother.

When I think of my grandmother, my first image is of her cooking. My grandmother and grandfather were from the Caribbean-my grandmother was from Barbados and my grandfather was from Trinidad/Tobago. One dish in particular that I remember my grandmother making was a fried pancake like pastry with cinnamon & sugar sprinkled on the top. This pastry was made in a frying pan. It was a dessert and wasn't part of the main meal.

This is the memory associated with that pastry:
When I was about ten years old, my sisters and I went to visit my grandparents. {my sisters=my twin sister, and one sister a year older and one sister a year younger}. The front door of my grandparents' home led directly to the kitchen, and the living room was right off of the kitchen. As was the practice then, the door was unlocked, and I remember us coming into the house, and seeing my grandmother in the kitchen cooking. I can't really recall whether my sisters stopped and gave my grandmother a hug or greeted her in any way, but I do remember that I went directly from the kitchen to the living room, looking for my grandfather. As I expected, I found my grandfather was in the living room reading a book.
I enthusiastically hugged and greeted him. But my grandfather had noticed that I hadn't properly greeted my grandmother. He said something to the effect of how do you think your grandmother feels, standing over the stove cooking for you and you walk right past her? My grandfather told me to go back into the kitchen and greet my grandmother. Of course, I did so. I remember that at that time my grandmother was making that cinnamon pancake pastry. She gave me some and I think this was the first time I had tasted it or at least it was the first time I recall eating it.

As an adult, I have tasted pastry like that at a Native American pow-wow and at an East African picnic [in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania].
It's interesting to me that this Caribbean dish is found in those different cultures. And I don't know what any of these cultures call it.

And whenever I come across this pastry, it reminds me of what a small world we live in.

And it reminds me of that day my grandfather taught me a lesson about taking time to showing proper respect to and appreciation for others partly because their feelings could get hurt if you don't and also because it is the proper and right thing to do.

****

I'd love to know the name of this Bajan pastry {pastry from Barbados]. Does anybody know it?

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Azizi
Date: 12 Aug 06 - 05:38 PM

I was searching for more information about the spiritual "I'm gonna sit at the welcome table" when I came across a Tavis Smiley interview of Maya Angelou. Magela Angelou's cookbook "Hallelujah! the Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes", 1st Edition
{Random House, September 2004} had just been published. In that conversation, Maya shares a memory from her childhood about caramel cake:
            
"Maya: Yes. My grandmother, um, made caramel cake, and it was so tedious for her. She cooked in a wood-burning stove. She didn't have brown sugar. So she had to do it all--it would be a 3 or 4 hour deal. I went to school one day-- and I didn't speak for a number of years. I had--I was a volunteer mute.


Tavis: Mm-hmm.


Maya: Everyone knew that. The teachers, everybody, the students. And, um... the teacher that day said, "You will speak. You will not bring that stupidness in my classroom." I didn't speak for 6 years. And she wound herself up, made herself so angry at me, she just hauled off and slapped me. And I hauled off and ran down to my grandmother, and my grandmother said, "In the name of God, sister." And so she said, "We'll go back to school." So she went back to school in a fresh apron sticking out like that, and she walked in the classroom. She asked, "Are you Miss Williams?" And the teacher said, "I am." And she asked, "Are you somebody's grandbaby?" And she said, "I'm someone's granddaughter." And my grandmother said, "Well, now this here, that's my grandbaby." [Slap] And she slapped her.


Tavis: Ha ha ha! Slapped the teacher.


Maya: Slapped the teacher. And then she said to me, she said, "Now, sister, I'm wrong this time. Nobody ought to slap nobody in the face."


Tavis: Mm-hmm.


Maya: "But I'm teaching a lesson. Now, sister, you find yourself a seat and sit down and get your lesson." So—no children, nobody said anything. Nothing like that had ever happened in Stamps, Arkansas, Lafayette County Training School. Ever.


Tavis: Mm-hmm.


Maya: So we were all in shock. When I went home that evening, my Uncle Willy said, "Sister, look in there on the table. I want you to get that thing and bring it out here." And I went in, Tavis Smiley. There was a beautiful caramel cake.



Tavis: Hmm.


Maya: I brought it out, and my Uncle Willy said, "Now, sister, nothing can make up for you being slapped in the face, but mama made this to let you know how much we love you, how precious you are." Now, you see, with that kind of love, you can come through insults, injuries, racism, sexism, ageism. With that kind of love-- and they'd never once hugged me. She made a caramel cake, and it took her 4 hours to do it."

Maya Angelou on Tavis Smiley PBS Show, Oct. 2004

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Azizi
Date: 12 Aug 06 - 05:49 PM

As an aside, notice how Tavis response to Maya's comments with
"Mm-hmm" or another brief comment. That reminds me of "call & response".

I read a book written by an African man who said that listeners are supposed to be active participants in conversations. To do other wise would be considered rude.

This philosphy explains the church congregations' Amens & Hallelujahs and the Blues, R&B, , early Jazz, and Hip-Hop listeners & dancers verbal responses to that music too.

****

Speaking of Blues, here's another excerpt from that same Tavis Smiley/Maya Angelou interview:

"Maya: It's so important, Tavis. People all over the world use food as a device. I mean, of course we use it because our bodies need it as fuel. But we also use it to flirt, to seek a job, to seek emp--and not just employment, but raises.


Tavis: Uh-huh.


Maya: We use it to prepare a climate for our conciliation, reconciliation. We can use food to tell a person you're not very important to me. There's an old blue, 19th century blue, in which the singer says, she makes corn bread for her husband, but biscuits for her man.


[Tavis laughs]


So that's that, you see?


Tavis: Yeah.


Maya: That tells you something. Because corn bread you can throw together with your left hand--


Tavis: Yeah.


Maya: But biscuits you have to take some time.


Tavis: Yeah. Ha ha ha!"

Source: Maya Angelou on Tavis Smiley PBS Show, Oct. 2004

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Sorcha
Date: 12 Aug 06 - 05:58 PM

Grans chicken and noodles....home made noodles means Christmas Dinner with ALL the family there. I miss it.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Ebbie
Date: 12 Aug 06 - 05:59 PM

Interesting thread, Azizi. Keep going!

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Azizi
Date: 12 Aug 06 - 06:03 PM

Thanks for all who post in this thread.

Ebbie, I'd like to 'hear' what others' have to 'say'.

I enjoy listening as well as talking.

:o}

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Peace
Date: 12 Aug 06 - 06:05 PM

Cappelletti with a nutmeg, chicken and romano cheese filling and then boiled in home-made chicken broth. Great old Christmas meal. The soup became the focus and the other stuff filled where there was room left.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 04:24 AM

I have some knowledges (not the same as memories cos I have very few memories from childhood). One memory is getting a half loaf from the baker who delivered it back in the days when food was delivered & picking at the doughy bit sticking out. yum

I know we took lunch to school most days - I assume it was a sandwich & fruit, and I also know that if I bought lunch (maybe Mondays?) it was a pie, chips (crisps) & cake. Bought lunch cost 2 shillings (before decimal currency came in in 1966 & 2 shillings changed to 20 cents) so I was less than 14 years old.

I know Dad gave us bought lunches & pancakes when Mum was in hospital having babies. He couldn't cook.

Mum was a bad cook & hated cooking. My brother tells me we put unwanted food we were being forced to eat (vegetables I guess) under the table on a little bit of a ledge behind the side bit.

A real memory from the 70's or 80's. I hadn't had a donut for ages so bought a pineapple one & can still remember the disappointment at the aweful taste, instead of the anticipated yumminess.

Another food memory from the days I was beginning to cook for myself. The book said boil the sugar to a syrup - but it didn't say, stay with it, stirring continually. It was a cold winter's night, (well, eastern Sydney's version of a cold winter night), & the place was filled with thick acrid smoke & the pan contained a very interesting layer of black stuff. Even opening all the windows didn't get rid of the smoke! I kept the black stuff for sometime as it was very pretty.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 05:20 AM

Sitting under the kitchen table (Thinks: so that's where Limpit gets it) on a dark winter morning, with a packet of 4 raspberry drops delivered by the baker. These were like Jaffa cakes but twice the size and full of raspberry jam. There was no taste like it, with the spongey bit still warm where it had rested against the warm bread in the van, the chocolate thick and sticky and raspberry jam that was more raspberry than sugar.... Mmmmmmmmmm.

I don't remember anything else about the day, I just know it was before 8.30am and still pitch black outside. I hadn't started school yet, so I must have been about 3 or 4. I suspect my mother was in her usual seat toasting bread by the electric fire, wearing a yellow overall. I don't know where my brother and sister were... I was under the table so they couldn't eat my raspberry drops.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 11:04 AM

Azizi...when my mother made pie crusts, she always used the leftover bits to do as you said...sprinkle sugar & cinnamon on them and bake them (rather than fry them, since she was baking anyway)...VERY occasionally she would put a bit of jam on bigger pieces and make turnovers, but the simple sugar/cinnamon ones were the staple!

In recent years I have cajoled my wife to adopt this practice...though we don't have pie that often....and my mouth still waters when those cinnamon sugar treats are ready.

I do remember sitting at a table during a storm (in New Orleans!) about 1946-7, eating potato soup made with bacon bits chopped into it and thinking there was no better treat in the world! It was many years before I learned that potato soup was what we ate when money was short....(these were the days when cheap hamburger was an occasional cat food, as there was not much in the way of commercial pet foods)

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 12:53 PM

I've got a slab of pastry in the fridge that needs using and I found the last jar of plum jam this afternoon.. guess I'm going to be baking later....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 01:01 PM

yum!

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 02:40 PM

One of my favorite meals, Bill, was a German/Amish omelet-like dish, actually souflle-like, that sometimes was baked, sometimes fried uptop in a large, heavy cast iron skillet. I thought of it as a treat because we didn't have it often.

Years later after I left home my roommate and I tried to make it, using lots of eggs. It didn't come out anything like what I remembered. Upon checking with my sisters I discovered that it was what we had had when money was tight and eggs were scarce. Humph.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Sorcha
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 02:47 PM

Same with me for potato soup....still a Comfort Food for me, esp on cold winter evenings...brings back Mom and Dad.....and all the comforts of Home.

Chocolate Cake....means a birthday party, or a church carry in.

Coffee brewing---friends coming over soon.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Kaleea
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 02:56 PM

Azizi,
   What you described having at a Pow Pow is probably what is usually called "Fry Bread." It is usually served with powdered sugar sprinkled on tip, & sometimes they might put cinnamon on it. I think that many indigenous peoples have such as that.
In the old days when the tribes were in the deep South, there was lots sweet fruit, such as peaches, which they sometimes used to make a syrup or Jam-like stuff to pour or put on the bread. (It's not all that different from the Peach cobbler that my Irish American Granny made when you think about it.) This would have been seasonal, of course, as the diet changed with the tribes moving to their favorite seasonal living spots. I have seen the old, diabetic men of the tribe (diabetes is quite common in most tribes) sitting there at gatherings eating the bread with peaches & pouring the peach syrup all over it & shoveling it in with big spoons.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: fat B****rd
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 02:59 PM

Coronation Day 1953. Egg Sandwiches, running about, throwing up. Haven't eaten one since.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: RangerSteve
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 03:29 PM

My father's family came from Merida, Yucatan Province in Mexico in 1922. I never saw my grandmother or great aunt make Mexican food, but my great aunt's sister in law was an excellent cook. She and her husband lived in Coney Island, Brooklyn back when it was still a decent neighborhood, and once a year my parents would take us there, and after a day at the amusement park, we'd go back and have the best Mexican food I've ever had. I've never had anything like it in Mexican restaurants. Black bean soup with thick noodles, beef empanadas, and a cassarole made of potatos, corn, peppers and lord knows what kind of spices. Like I said, no restaurant I've ever been to comes close. Maybe it's Mexican restaurants never feature Yucatan food. All the old relatives are gone now, so I'll never get the recipes.

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 04:06 PM

RangerSteve- for a brief while, maybe 20+ years ago, there was a small Mexican 'eatery' in an abandoned Dairy Queen building in Arlington VA. which served food like that. The family that ran it was from the Monterey region, which is north of Yucatan, of course, but they had very similar recipes to those you mention. I ate there several times, exploring one wonderful 'different' dish after another....then one day I tried to take some friends there, only to find it empty. I guess it just wasn't the food people expected to find in Mexican restaurant...or maybe they actually moved to a 'better place'....I just never found it.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Sorcha
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 04:29 PM

OK...try putting 'epazote' in the black beans....or, ask Mr Google for SOAR, online recipe source...put in Yucatan

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Sorcha
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 04:31 PM

CLICK

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Azizi
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 05:03 PM

Thanks Kaleea!

I'm not sure if my grandmother called what she made "fry bread", but that's what I'll call it until I find some Bajan people who have another name for it.

I don't know why I'm surprised that indigenous people have the same or similar foods. After all, they have the same or similar folktales, and other traditions.

The whole world is kin. We're just learning more about our long lost kin thanks to the Internet.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Scoville
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 06:03 PM

My brother learned to make fry bread when he was in elementary school. We made it for awhile and it always makes me think of him (in general, though, my mother never, ever, fried anything so we haven't made it in ages. I should do that again sometime).

The Mexican restaurants in Denver always had fried ice cream (with a crunchy crumb shell--possibly sweetened cornflakes?) on the menu and that was the BIGGEST treat ever. I never see it here in Texas.

Our favorite cold-weather meal was green chili gravy (something else my mother got in Denver but that I don't find in Texas)--thickened broth base with tomatoes, onions, loads of garlic, chilis (not ragingly hot, though), and meat. We always ate it over eggs, rice, and shredded lettuce but I don't know what is the "proper" context. My brother eats it like soup.

Christmas always meant gingerbread houses (we are pros at this), oatmeal-raisin cookies (which I hate but appreciate for the effort my mother took to devise the perfect recipe), Mom's precious sugar cookies, and my grandmother's labor-intensive Moravian molasses cookies. I love those Moravian cookies but they are so much work to roll out properly!

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Peace
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 10:06 PM

My most vivid memory of food is from New York City. I went eleven days without.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Sorcha
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 10:15 PM

Scoville, PM me...I do a MEAN green chile gravy...and 'fried' ice cream is easy...it IS sugared cornflakes.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Azizi
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 10:36 PM

I have some memories like Peace mentioned, though not 11 days straight.

I'm sorry to hear that, and I'm glad you made it through that difficult time.

I cringe when I think of all the food and other things the USA wastes when their are people going hungry and going without.

Though I certainly don't think of myself as well to do, I suppose to lots of others in this world, I am rich-in material goods I mean.

Though this is off the subject, about 25 years ago, an international student from Zimbabwe spent the weekend with me and my children. We didn't have a washer or dryer and I had bags of clothes to take to the laundromat and I didn't even have a car to get the bags of clothes there or bring them back home.

But I will never forget this woman's comment that I must be rich since my children and I had all of those clothes. She had 5 dresses, but she said that was due to tremendous sacrifice since she was going to school in this country. Usually people in her country had {have?} two outfits to wear. When one is dirty, they wash it and wear the other one.

That was truly a humbling experience.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Azizi
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 10:47 PM

I meant the conversation I had with the woman from Zimbabwe was humbling not the washing clothes the poor people in Zimbabwe have to do..I don't mean that they are humble or poor in spirit I meant they are poor in material goods and sometimes we think we are poor when we actually have more than other people in the world or at least we have a chance of getting more even though times are bad for us.

That's what was humbling.

Oh, you knew what I mean. My trying to explain it is just making it muddier.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Sorcha
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 10:57 PM

I did indeed know what you meant...I'm just surpised she didn't offer to carry in (on her head?) to the laundromat...and insisit on doing it.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Azizi
Date: 13 Aug 06 - 11:00 PM

Sorcha, Sorcha, Sorcha...

and that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Helen
Date: 14 Aug 06 - 10:32 PM

Azizi,

I don' think you ever need to explain what you mean, because your heart shows through in everything you say.

I was thinking about avocados the other day. I never even saw one until the mid 70's when I was sharing a house with some other people. One of them told me how he liked to prepare avocados because I said I had tried a bit and thought it was a bit ordinary.   He mixed some up with a little olive oil, lemon juice, salt & pepper and put it on hot buttered toast. It is still one of my favourite treats.   The olive oil is essential because the olive flavour and the avocado flavour go so well together. Sometimes I mince a small clove of garlic and put in it as well, and sometimes I mix a bit of sour cream in too. It doesn't have the bells & whistles of guacamole. The avocado is the star ingredient, not just one of the chorus line.

The reason that having that first avocado experience was so memorable is that my Mum always had good meals prepared for us, and we never went hungry, but what we had was the classic Australian cuisine of meat and 3 veg, and dessert. (She was involuntarily made to be the cook and housekeeper on her family's chicken farm before she was married, so she actually didn't like cooking & cleaning much, but she was very good at it.) She made sure that we ate a good balance of food, and made it interesting for us, like when we were kids she used to hide a dollop of peanut butter in the mashed potatoes, and when she made pikelets (little thick pancakes) she would always make a letter 'A' for my sister Anne and a letter 'H' for me.

I remember once Mum brought home a packet mix which had ingredients (supposedly) for making a pizza. There was the flour mix to make the base, and a little packet of tomato sauce mix, and a little packet of what I later found out was Parmesan cheese but which smelled and tasted foul. A failed experiment.

If we had ever had a real pizza Mum would have made one up for us, just by knowing what it looked and tasted like, but the first pizza place I ever went to was about 10 or 15 years later in Sydney. There wasn't one in my home town at that stage, either.

Zucchinis became more common in the 70's too, and the Italian influence on Australian cuisine can never be underestimated. There is a television show in Oz called
Secret Recipes , where a French-born Oz chef goes to different Oz people's places, from different cultural heritages, and finds out their favourite recipes by watching them cook. To me it is a true reflection of Oz, because we have so many people from different cultural backgrounds and it all mixes in to make a cultural whole which is Oz, and that is reflected in what people eat.

There is a street of cafés in Hamilton, a suburb of Newcastle where I live, and you can walk down that street and see so many different cultures and so many different varieties of food. It's the way Oz is, for me. Not homogenised where everything is blended so much that everyone loses their individual identity, but mixed together, retaining their identity and contributing to the whole social fabric, making it a rich cultural experience.

Thanks for this thread, Azizi.

Helen

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 15 Aug 06 - 06:15 AM

Helen, I want an avocado!!

I fill up on a friend's mashed avocado (nuffin' in it, just avocado) & at a recent party I had more than my share of some yummy avocado salad (mashed avocado, chopped tomatoes, quartered lemons, & other stuff which I don't remember)

time for dinner - I dunno what I'll have, but I think I'll buy an avocado tomorrow!

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: JennyO
Date: 15 Aug 06 - 06:41 AM

I remember that avocado salad. I wonder who brought it?

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Aug 06 - 06:51 AM

Peroshki and Kotletki at my Polish grans. Giant Yorkshire pudding filled with baked beans and sprinkled with grated cheese at my English grans. Both very vivid memories but no-one has yet managed to capture the same flavours - Try as we might!

Funny you should mention the egg butties fat B. I couldn't eat kidney for years after having gastro-enteritis immediately after eating some. It was all I could taste while throwing up:-( Got over it now but Mrs G hasn't eaten a whimberry pie since she was about 7 for similar reasons!

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 15 Aug 06 - 11:31 PM

I have never been able to cope with tripe....

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Bert
Date: 15 Aug 06 - 11:39 PM

I know I posted this years ago, but I can't find it so here goes again.

Way back in the late Forties Mum had three kids to raise on not much money and rationing as well.

Many an evening she made supper for the three of us from a can of tomato soup eked out with evaporated milk and served with bread - and often she wasn't hungry.

One evening we came home to a meat pie which we devoured quickly. It wasn't until after we'd finished that she confessed that it was whale meat that was not rationed. It's funny that she wasn't hungry taht night either.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Sep 06 - 01:58 PM

semolina with red suff in the middle - school dinners - YUK

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Sep 06 - 02:26 PM

Lots of food associations.

In the Mudcat food thread category, most of the early food threads I enjoyed were started by Rick Fielding as a query after some kitchen disaster or other. And sometimes he was just looking for a recipe. Those were good cooking threads!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Sep 06 - 06:36 PM

My mother made an egg-less Chocolate Peanut Butter cake I just loved. She got the recipe off a Peter Pan peanut butter can about 1948 -- and I still have the recipe.

Her tapioca was also wonderful.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 10 Sep 06 - 09:46 PM

Living on a commune in Vermont with an enormous vegetable garden, we ate whatever was ripe, supplemented with brown rice, home made bread, beans and such. One week only turnips were ripe and the troops were complaining mightily. It was my turn on KP. To liven up all that beige food and disguise the turnips, I mixed food coloring into everything. We had green bread, blue rice, orange turnips and purple yogurt. Things were much more cheerful at mealtimes, at least for a day or two while the novelty lasted.

Elmer

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Sep 06 - 12:13 AM

Rap, send or post that recipe, please!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 11 Sep 06 - 04:11 AM

The taste of good wan ton takes me back to a fantastic night in Oxford... but I'm too much of a lady (OK, stop laughing) to tell!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: jacqui.c
Date: 11 Sep 06 - 08:30 AM

My father was a travel agent back in the mid 50's. One of his customers was an Indian importer named Mr Cambatta. Father did a lot of work for this guy and they became friends.

One time Mr Cambatta had imported mangoes for a deal that fell through. He was left with a number of cases of this very unusual (at that time) and bery perishable fruit. We ended up with two cases - each about the size of a tea chest, from my recollection. I can still remember the first taste of the most exotic food I had experienced. It was mangoes for breakfast every morning for a while and we had to give one case to the local hospital.

It was a long time before mangoes came onto the general market in the UK - at least at prices I could afford - but the taste of a mango still takes me back to one of the most pleasant memories I have of my childhood.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 11 Sep 06 - 09:25 AM

My worst food memory is from the early 1950s. As a four year old child I spent 9 weeks in hospital (in my UK home town). They used to serve white fish with mashed potato. To this day the taste and texture of white fish makes me heave.

My best food memory dates from a business trip to Thailand in 1992.
I was working in a factory, on the edge of a small market town, about 20 or 30 miles from Bangkok. Every lunchtime I and my colleagues were taken to a restaurant in the town. It always seemed as if half of the people working in the factory came with us on these occasions (Thais are very sociable people). The tables in the restaurant would be loaded with piles of delicious food - all flavoured with exotic and (at that time) unfamiliar herbs and spices like sweet basil, lemon grass, galangal and, of course, loads of chili! It still makes my mouth water just to think of it. How I managed to work in the afternoons I shall never know!

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 11 Sep 06 - 12:36 PM

As a college kid in the before time, I played Asteroids before certain classes, always with a cup of the machine coffee with extra coffee, extra creamer, extra sugar (so it would have a taste).

Many years later, I'm going past an office, glance in and see that the worker has an Asteroids screen saver - and my mouth filled instantly with the taste of that machine coffee!

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 11 Sep 06 - 01:33 PM

I have two very distinct food memories, and as it appears with most memories of this type - it brings me back to my childhood.

The first is about a piece of toast. Not just any piece of toast, but it was a cinnamon bread that was made by the now defunct Bonds Bread Bakery in New York. When I was young we had a milkman who would deliver milk, bread and other staples. My mother would always order a loaf as a treat. The bread had swirls of what I guess was brown sugar cinnamon - sort of like the crumbs you find on crumbcake but it was swirled in the bread instead of on top. My mother would toast a piece and spread some butter on it for me. I can still taste it, and the memory brings me back to our family kitchen - sitting at the old 1950's style chrome table and watching my mother working in the kitchen. I have spent years trying to find a recipe but nothing comes close.

The other memory takes me back to the 1964 NY World's Fair. There was a restaurant that made a pizza that had such a distinct taste.   I am not 100% sure of what spice they used in their sauce, but I think it may have anise.   I've tried to recreate it, but it doesn;t come close.   Again, I can close my eyes and remember that amazing fair and seeing all the sights with my parents. The taste of that pizza haunts me.   Oh for just one more slice...

The other memory

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Becca72
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 03:46 PM

My mother was a horrid cook so most of those memories are bad ones...but a silly one I remembered yesterday is Canada Mints..my grandmother always had the pink variety hanging around. I saw them in the store the other day and just had to get some. They taste just as I remember.

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 04:00 PM

Ron,

I'll bet there was some ground fennel in that sauce. It's what is used in Italian sausage, and is noted for its licorice-like flavor.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Jeri
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 06:15 PM

Ron, try fennel seeds - they're kind of anise-y and they're the little seeds you find in good pepperoni.

My mom baked bread. I was jealous of all the kids who got to eat that cloudlike, store-bought Wonder Bread, and I never understood why people would drop by while she was baking and swoon at the smell. It was just my mom's crummy (round!) homemade bread. I'd love to taste that again.

Her turkey croquettes, made with the leftover turkey and stuffing. You grind everything together, add egg and form into little elongated balls, then deep fry the balls. Serve with gravy. This was what my mother was making when I lost the end of my index finger. I was only 3, but I remember being quite indignant with her for throwing the redder-than-usual mixture out. I have her recipe for these, but I don't cook turkey so I don't get the leftovers. One of these years, though...

Then there was leftover from-scratch chocolate frosting on Saltines.

We had the leftover pie crust dough thing, too. My mom rolled it out really thin, brushed with butter, dusted with cinnamon & sugar. Then she rolled it up like a jelly roll, sliced it and and baked the slices. My mom called these 'railroad cakes'. (Bet she got this from Betty Crocker or some other secret source!)

Subject: RE: BS: Memories Associated With Food
From: Jeri
Date: 13 Sep 06 - 06:25 PM

I really didn't see SRS's post about fennel before I finished writing that long post. We must be right.

I was at that World's Fair too, Ron. Still have a cheap ring from it somewhere. Now, let's talk about ball games and summer and hot dogs!