Majumdar asserts the ability to remember every meal he ever ate, as does the rest of his family. I won't make such a claim here, but I do know that food is a powerful memory inducer. The most memorable Thanksgiving I had was in 1971, when my mother was too sick with bronchitis to cook, and my father apparently did not have the ability to cook up a turkey dinner, so he whipped up some french toast for my sister, brother and I, which we soaked up with Log Cabin syrup. Other Thanksgivings I remember are ones I was taught to cook some part of the meal. My husband is in charge of the turkey at our house now, but I still make the cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and pie which were the things my mother taught me to prepare on various Thanksgiving days. I learned a valuable lesson about doubling recipes when I made two pumpkin pies with the filling ingredients for only one. We ate very thin pies that year.
Recently my brother-in-law got the family into a very lively conversation about food by asking this simple question: When you were old enough to cook something for yourself, and left home alone, what did you fix? Memories came flooding back about steak-um sandwiches, frozen chicken pot pies and boil-in bags. Majumdar's family ate a lot better than that, though.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I wish food would induce memories for me. When I think back, I can hardly ever remember the food being eaten. Food has never held as much priority for me as it seems to with those I know--I know a lot of foodies. I eat food because my body requires it, biologically speaking, and my mind prefers to know the body it sits atop is eating. That tends to be good enough for me.
ReplyDeleteI would like to change that. I have to remind myself to slow down and eat each bite slowly, understand that eating is not a race to get on to the next task. It is an activity in itself within a day. There are very few foods I ever crave or particularly desire.
I wish I could remember the first meal I cooked for myself when left alone. I never did learn how to cook--I will have to next year, when I'm in a house with friends rather than in accommodation. I probably made microwave popcorn and ate chips with salsa. Groans and shakes head. The only thing I've consistently been able to make in my life is scrambled eggs! I DO remember often bringing my parents scrambled-egg-based-meals to be eaten in bed for holidays, Mum's nice and well done, Da's less done and with some cheese.
Thank you for making me think once more! :D
Scrambled eggs with local, free-range eggs can be a treat!
ReplyDeleteI was at the memory session Pam mentions above, and I'm afraid that although I'm a bit of a foodie now (http://webhost.bridgew.edu/jhayesboh/food), it was not always thus. My most persistent cook-it-yourself treat from kid days was Spam(tm) fried crispy on white bread, with French's yellow mustard (the only kind of bread and mustard I knew until I was well into college).