Memories

Many of the things I’m going to write about here are memories of foods and of the people who cooked them and served them. I didn’t realize how important food memories are – I didn’t realize the impact they’d had on me. But when I started cooking mindfully, the memories came back and I realized that I want to collect them. For this blog, I also hope to re-create some of the dishes, take pictures, and share them with you. Not all of them will be thrilling, and they might no even be very original, but I think they will all be yummy.  And I will have a nice record of my favorite foods and memories.

Memories are slippery- I may recall something one way, while my sister or my  aunts or cousins may recall something completely different.  Inventing stories doesn't interest me, however - I find it much more interesting to try to recall actual events, actual foods, and the people involved. 

My father was from South Carolina and we all loved Southern comfort food. We would visit his family in their little town of Clover, SC, and I remember how my granddaddy Grady used to cut his fried eggs on his plate- his plate of bacon, eggs, grits, toast. I remember how my grandmother used to make toast in the oven- she would butter the bread first and it was so delicious with the butter melted in. We never made it that way at home, and I never thought to ask for it. I remember my grandmother's lemon pound cake, and how the "sad streak" was my favorite part. I recall my aunt Nell, who lived in North Carolina, making fried chicken for my sister and I, and how we begged her to make it again and again, not understanding how much work it was.

 I remember when our neighbor, Dr. Choi, made jabchae for us for the first time, and her impossibly perfect knife cuts.

I remember my dad making me a "hash nest" for the first time: corned beef hash, with an egg. I wish I could remember exactly how he made it. And when he made soft boiled eggs, he would hold the hot egg in his hand and smack it with a knife, to crack it exactly in half. I loved "egg in a dish". 

I remember my mother’s mother, Nonny, making macaroni and cheese for us, using Velveeta. My mother, as I recall, didn't really like to cook. To be fair, though, she was up against a lot, as my father wanted her to recreate his favorite Southern dishes, and he didn't like such things as casseroles or Velveeta. My mother fed us kids TV dinners, and they were kind of fun! but my father wouldn't eat them. 

Some of my favorite memories with my father were made when he grilled steak outside, in the yard of our little house on the campus of the Mount Hermon School in Gill, MA. We never had more than one steak, but as he grilled it I would stand next to him and we would cut off bites of steak to "test" them. I wonder how much steak was actually left to take into the house! The brown, crisp fat on the edges of the meat was my favorite part. 

The first time I ever cooked anything at all, I was about five or six. I wasn’t supposed to be near the stove, but I sneaked over when the grownups weren’t around, They had been making hamburgers, and I found that they left a hot pan on the stove. I found some raw hamburger that have been left near the stove and put it in the pan, and was fascinated to see that it bubbled and cooked. It changed, merely by being put in that hot pan, and I was hooked. When I was about 10, my mother gave me a spiral-bound Betty Crocker cookbook. It was meant for young couples, and it had a recipe in it for donut cake and for pineapple upside down cake. I hope my parents liked pineapple upside down cake, because I made it a lot. For my 12th birthday, I invited friends over and made them a whole dinner, with pork chops in a pineapple sauce. 

I remember having a real French omelette, in France, somewhere near Angers. Our host in France took us to a country inn, which we reached by taking a tiny ferry, just a raft really, across a small river to this inn.  The ferry was pulled by hand by a man pulling on a tow rope. I remember the omelette - it was delicate, thin, slightly runny in the center, and filled with herbs. It was delicious. I’ve never forgotten it. I wish I could remember the rest of that meal. I had never had eggs like that or  cooking like that.

More food memories are sure to come to me soon! I will sign off for now... I hope you will leave comments with some of your favorite foods and food memories. 

Dana