Cooking Fire

I was passed this “Food Memories” Meme from Shuna Fish Lydon (a fellow blogero, read it). Everyone interested in food as touchstone for memory should read “Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger” by British food writer Nigel Slater. It’s got a couple parts where he pull the punch, but in general it’s a great read of how boy turns from Parmesan-hating sissy to so-is-he-gay-or-not reflective gourmet.

This post took me a while to get up online because I’ve been really busy. Oddly, I put together a bilingual advertising campaign for Endicott College, Mexico where Carlos is currently working. Carlos was accepted to an LLM program in Human Rights Law in Ireland, and so my time in Mexico is being shortened. I’ll be back in Boston at the end of the summer, then to Ireland, then to China, if all goes according to plan (Ha! Right. Nothing ever goes according to plan, but that’s the fun of it.) And I decided that in a few years, I think I want to get a PhD in Anthropology — but not before I write a cookbook. Anyway, here’s my 5+ food memories.

Prohibition and Permission: Caffeine
I had a little cup that may have been the fanciest thing in the house — bone china, worn gold gilt rimming its thin lip and stem, with a matching little decorated saucer. Certain foods, drinks were the domain of adults. I was allowed a small espresso sized cup of coffee, heavily creamed on special occasions, in this special cup. It was a small opening into the adult world that seemed to offer any number of mysterious treats in tastes of bitter, acid, strong.

On that theme, I had always been curious about what the adults drank, what they ate, what was only for them. My father used to grind coffee in an old steel hand grinder. I must have watched him as he took the grounds, smelled the aroma of fresh ground coffee, and transferred them to the pot. I would have been about two or three, looking on, when one day, I walked over to the grinder, pulled out the compartment for the grounds, and in my most adult imitating manner, put my nose straight into the powder, and inhaled. I fell to the floor shrieking and screaming, having lined my sinuses with French Roast. Being new parents, they panicked and called the doctor to see if an ambulance were necessary. The doctor barely controlled his laughter, told them that I would be fine, uncomfortable but fine, and to keep blowing my nose.

Special: Smoked Oysters
My favorite thing as a kid, the ultimate treat, was a can of smoked oysters, eaten with colored toothpicks, or on saltines. I don’t know what sort of a hold these canned-in-oil mollusks had over me as a kid, but they were the favorite, the thing we ate on Christmas, special occasions, or randomly, unexpectedly my mother would pick them up at the grocery, and present them to us or when my grandparents would send them from Arkansas, of all places for oysters.

Restaurants
We rarely ever went out to eat. I think it was a combination of frugality and comportment. My younger brother and I were probably not to be trusted in public. One “restaurant” that was huge whe I was little was Chuck-E-Cheese. I never got invited to a party there.

My Father’s Cooking
My father’s approach to cooking was more of careful skilled construction. My mother cooked, wineglass in hand, with pinches, glugs, sloshes, and equally imprecise, artistic measurements. My mother cooked Southern, lots of spice. My father cooked German. Most birthdays, I would have one of his concoctions — in addition to the gaudy iced spongy cake I would have demanded from the store. Soccertort, or a favorite linsdortort (spelling here is interpretive), made from butter and almonds and raspberry, with a woven glazed crust. A beautiful thing that I never appreciated until I was older.

The White Jar
There was always a jelly jar in our refrigerator filled with translucent white fat. Bacon Drippings, lard. My mother would drip all the fat into this cup from the pan from breakfast, and then leave it in the fridge to congeal. I remember some friends once looking in our fridge and being horrified. I went through a period of revulsion at the idea of using lard, but I’m won over now.

Grits
Christmas morning. Casserole of grits, Jimmy Dean sausage and Kraft Garlic “Cheese.” My God, this might be my favorite dish in the world.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2005 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.