Have you ever taken a bite of some dish and been transported unexpectedly to some past place or time? Me, too.
Sometimes the mere thought of food can carry me away: Once again, I’m in a San Diego hotel the first time I tasted real fresh-squeezed orange juice, and it was a revelation. The thought of fabulously intense raspberry sorbet puts me on the Ile-St.-Louis in Paris. My mouth waters at the thought of the best peaches I ever ate, sitting at a picnic table in Ottawa, Kansas, during a summer Suzuki Institute (known in our house as violin camp).
Sometimes, though, it’s the taste itself that starts the journey. I cannot eat anything with black walnuts without finding myself in my grandmother’s kitchen, trying not to bewail the way she ruined brownies with the wretched things. Old-time gritty pears and pickled beets and burnt-sugar cake put me there, too, but with happier recollection. On rare occasions I come across that goofy salad popular in the 1960s that combined cottage cheese, Cool Whip and Jell-O mix, I’m back at my childhood home. Seven-minute frosting and divinity and cottage cheese with homegrown tomatoes provide other take-me-home tastes.
Seeing the movie “Ratatouille” yesterday reminded me of time travel through food (if you see it, you’ll know the moment when it arrives) , and it made me wonder a little where tastes will transport many of today’s young people.
Will they be lucky enough to have parents who create food memories for them? Or will their taste memories be just one long, mostly indistinguishable series of overly processed foods made marginally palatable with more salt, more sweetener (mostly likely from corn or a artificial sweetener) and carefully formulated mouthfeel? I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
Judith // Jul 11, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I’ll add to the list: fresh-picked corn or walnuts, fresh asparagus (not canned, yuck!!), real lemonade made from scratch, home baked bread. The processed versions do bear a similarity to the original, but suffer a lot in translation.
Bravo, Janet, for reminding us that eating fresh and eating local is not just for the incomparably better flavor but also a gift to future generations.
Janet Majure // Jul 11, 2007 at 12:46 pm
What a nice thing to say, Judith. Thanks!
Gayla // Jul 11, 2007 at 1:14 pm
When I read about the wonderful memories of a grandmother’s cooking, I laugh because my grandmother was a very bad cook!
She often make a ‘mock apple pie’, which substituted Ritz crackers for apples. It was mushy, salty, and offered little ‘curb appeal’. She would try her hands at a cake now and then, but would often mistake the sugar for the baking soda.
After her many cooking disasters, when going to her home, we settled in for her bag of Circus Peanuts and box of vanilla sugar cookies. With that said, there isn’t a time go by that when I browse the cookie and candy sections of the market that I don’t think of my grandmother.
Thank you for reminding me again.
Janet Majure // Jul 11, 2007 at 4:08 pm
What a hoot, Gayla. Just goes to show, bad food can be memorable, too. :)
Alarie // Jul 11, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Thanks, Janet, for a lovely trip down food memory lane. Leaving behind so many regional favorites of my childhood when I moved to Kansas City has made me even more nostalgic for foods of my past: Carolina barbecue, Smithfield ham, Brunswick stew, and fresh seafood. Has anyone else even heard of a square dog? I, too, have vivid memories of my grandmother’s sweets, even though she died when I was five. Maybe that’s because my mother worked and didn’t have time to make chocolate and lemon meringue pies or the best-homemade doughnuts. And I had to make my own ratatouille after seeing the movie-not as pretty, but more to my liking.
Janet Majure // Jul 12, 2007 at 1:20 pm
How fiendish of you to hold “square dog” out there and not tell what it is, Alarie! After going past numerous “[Whatever] Square dog run/park” references and links to square dogs, meaning (if I understand correctly) relatively broad, short dogs, like Pugs.
Anyway, I finally found this definition:
Is that it??