A comment by @Auspicious on the current WFD thread got me thinking of food memories and the comfort they bring. Nostalgia for family recipes has always had a very strong pull on me, and I’ve collected many recipes in several 3-ring binders (pre-Internet, computer/online software days).
I want to know how many of you have hard-coded food memories as I do, including:
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I remember eating the Fattigmands Bakkelser cookies that my Norwegian grandmother used to make at Christmas, and never realizing the time and patience it took her to make them until I tried it myself as an adult. Once. Never again! LOL
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I remember my father creating his own peanut satay sauce (ubiquitous now, not so much in the early1970s in white-bread northern New Jersey) after having enjoyed it several times in an Indonesian hotel while he was directing/shooting an industrial film there (the hotel chef only gave him a general idea of what was in the sauce). While Dad’s recipe is NOT authentic at all, as the ingredients were what was readily available in NJ at the time, it is still my personal go-to for peanut sauce.
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Being asked to make my apple pie (technically, the 1976 Better Homes & Garden with the red-checked gingham cover cookbook recipe I still use to this day for pie crust and filling) within 15 minutes of getting to my brother’s apt. in Chicago in the mid-1980s (I barely had time to pee first before he asked!) back in the early 1980s for the Thanksgiving holiday I was going to spend with him…and him not having a rolling pin, so I used a bottle of wine I had stuck in the freezer, and him being thoroughly impressed and saying I made the best pies he’d ever had.
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Dad making sukiyaki at the dining table in the electric skillet. Our friends who joined us for satay or sukiyaki were always fascinated by the “weird” things we ate (again, it was a very white bread neighborhood, and the 1970s. I know/hope they realized it wasn’t weird as they became adults and began to experience new foods; just different from what they were used to at the time. And seriously, sukiyaki is NOT weird!).
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Getting double-yolk eggs from the farm near my Grandma’s house in central PA. Not a common occurrence for someone growing up in northen NJ in the 60s and 70s.
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Making a key lime pie for a pie baking contest in my sophomore year of high school, and winning the contest. I think the prize was a $20 gift certificate to Sam Goody’s, and I bought the blue Beatles compilation album with it (already had the red one). When I went back for the pie plate and any leftovers, the pie was all gone. My brother made me make another one that weekend. (He REALLY liked my pies! LOL) And many fellow students talked to me about that pie several years later. LOL
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Bringing my grandma back to her house from her nursing home for a visit and early dinner, which was comprised of over-done steaks cooked in a little standalone broiler, Minute Rice (because I hadn’t yet figured out how to make “real” rice) and peas, and Grandma enjoying the hell out of that meal because she was in her home and I had made it for her.
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Cooking my first Thanksgiving meal for my Mom, sister and BIL in my new townhouse, and chopping off a small chunk of my fingernail while mincing herbs and my Mom coming to my medical rescue. The meal was still very good, despite “The Great Thanksgiving Knife Incident of 2011” and me finishing the cooking with a big ol’ bandage on my left forefinger. And no, I still don’t have a proper finger curl down pat, although I’m better at it.
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My sister insisting I make the gravy for Thanksgiving at her house one year, because “you know how to do it best” (and I learned it from our Mom). And her waving off my attempts to show her the method, saying “I don’t need to know, that’s what you’re here for. Just tell me what you need.” I have subsequently learned to ask what herbs and spices she has and bring my own if she doesn’t have them…although she’s gotten better at having more “normal” herbs and spices in her house. LOL
I think that’s enough from me, although I’m sure I have plenty more food memories. What are yours?