There are a number of ways to trace your own personal history. You can go back through family photo albums and trace the fashion and hair. You can do it with music, by listing the songs that represent special times in your life. You can do it with home videos (as embarrassing as they may be). And you can do it with food. Food has a unique power to evoke the past; to remind us of occasions, both good and bad, and those long gone. Food has created a bond in my family. It is an integral part of who we are, and how we relate to each other. I think of my father every time I flip a pancake and of my grandmother every time I eat bagels and lox.
Our family meal was not just dinner. It was a time of sharing, laughing, and talking about anything. While dinner was not the same time every night, we always made a concerted effort to eat together. It was always a sit down (never in front of the TV) meal and we all took a role in some aspect of the meal whether it be shopping, meal planning, cooking, setting the table, or cleaning up.
When I think of food growing up here are a few things that come to mind:
-Baking chocolate chip cookies on snow days with my sister
-Eating the dough of Pillsbury pre-made sugar cookies (so much for baking them)
-Returning home famished from sports practices and walking into the house seeing dinner on the table
-My mother’s chicken soup-an instant cure for when I’m sick
-Waking up to the delicious, sweet smell of Aunt Jemima pancakes that my dad made every Sunday, complemented with local Maple Syrup of course.
-The joint effort by all my family members to make potato latkes from scratch, which resulted in all of us smelling like potatoes for 4 days straight
-Tuesday Taco Nights
-Roasting chestnuts over an open fire, but my dad always having trouble maintaining the fire
-S’mores at camp
-Frozen thin mints and Mallomars
-Chinese take-out on Christmas
-My grandma’s cookies. Just the smell of cookies at a bakery takes me back.
-Tuna sandwiches my mom packed me for lunch at school, which were seen as “uncool” compared to all the Lunchables my friends had.
-Standing under a blueberry tree at my cousin’s summerhouse in Fire Island, grabbing blueberry after blueberry, with the juices dripping down my arms.
-Watching my Dad sharpening his carving knives for cutting the turkey on Thanksgiving
-Ordering pizza instead of the leftover food that we were supposed to eat whenever my mom went on a business trip. We would always try to keep it a secret from her, although that never worked since the pizza box wasn’t quite strategically hidden in the garbage every time.
-My sister and I racing lobsters in my house not connecting the fact that they would soon be boiled and eaten by us.
As you can see, food not only nourishes our bodies and can taste delicious, but it is a tie that binds memories.
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