What is your favorite food memory?

What food do you associate fondly with memories? Or perhaps, not so fondly?

Ground meat and gravy over rice, like my mother used to make.
Well, one of my favorites.

>2 Crypto-Willobie: My grandmother made that only we ate it over mashed potatoes. Yum!

All food comes spiced with memories! My not-so-fond one - hominy. It tasted okay, but my stomach would immediately reject it, violently. My mom thought I was just being persnickety and would try to hide it in mashed potatoes or something, but my subsequent mad dashes to the bathroom eventually taught her otherwise.

My fond memory was of my absolute favorite dessert. It was time-consuming to make, so it rarely appeared as I was growing up, but yum! Then, many years after I had forgotten all about it, I was in Paris for the first time, eating at a fancy restaurant, and a bit miffed that there weren’t any English translations for all the menu items; the wait staff were no help, either. On the dessert menu there was something with the word “œufs” in it (œufs á la neige), which I recognized as one of the ten or so words of French that I knew, so I ordered it, whatever it was. I was enraptured, totally blown away, when my childhood favorite snow pudding appeared, huge, floating in a sea of custard sauce, three times the helping my mom ever served me! I was in heaven.

My mom's ham casserole.

I love it. I also equate it with "home." One year I was in the hospital right after Christmas for a scheduled surgery on my leg. Mom and Dad came up to see me, and they told me they had had ham casserole for lunch. I burst into tears. When I got to go home a week later, Mom made it for me again.

A not-so-fond memory: lima beans. Or milk. I don't like either one. I used to have to sit at the supper table until I finished them. I did figure out that if I just sat there until everyone had left the room, I could very quietly get up and pour the milk down the sink or put the lima beans back in the bowl.

>5 Hope_H: Totally agree about the lima beans. I still get the shakes just thinking about them. My stomach would threaten to send them right back. Peas had the same effect. Why do parents think that forcing a child to eat something is doing them any good? Dad usually kept on eye on me so I couldn't get rid of them easily. At least I did manage to sneak some peas to my dog.

As for good memories, that would be chilled sliced tomatoes sprinkled with sugar. I was always happy when the meal included pickled beets or warm corn bread. And my mother's homemade cakes and pies.

>5 Hope_H:, >6 Taphophile13:

I'll take your lima beans if you'll take my cauliflower and broccoli.

>7 lilithcat: Gladly! I'll take those any day!

Bacon and onion pudding. A very tasty steamed pudding made from suet and flour with a bit of bacon and onion mixed in. In those post-war austerity days it was a way of feeding a family cheaply (suet and flour) with the minimum amount of pricier stuff (bacon). I got the recipe from my mum before she died and I cook it occasionally. Maybe twenty years ago I even found it on the food menu in a pub, the Moletrap near Ongar in Essex, but it doesn't appear to be common these days.

>7 lilithcat:

I'll definitely take the cauliflower and broccoli - they'd go nicely with the bacon and onion pudding!

My mother was not an inspired cook, so it was mostly just meat and potatoes. I did not like hominy. My mother told me that I would not eat chili, either; but I have no recollection of this and today I love chili. I like corn, polenta, and cornbread, today, but still a no-go on the hominy!

>7 lilithcat: Oh, yes please.

Home made meringue. The food of heaven. Optional tangy lemon pie underneath.

My background is "Latvian" and I loved Piragi, A yeast dough dumpling with usually a bacon/onion/etc baked filling.
When Mum died 40+ years ago I tried to replicate them. I failed. I asked the elder Latvian Ladies for advice but was told that this was secret women's business :-)

Yeah Google. I made a reasonable copy.

The smell takes me back 60+ years...

>13 guido47: Most of my growing up community was Polish, so pierogi with mashed potato and onion filling was served at most parties. Ooh! Yum! Weddings especially were so much fun; because the old men would polka with all the little ones.

Thanksgiving at my parent's house between the ages of 9 and 25 (more or less.) This was before their generation retired and moved to different areas in Florida, and before/during the time the older siblings and cousins began to scatter all over the country perusing college degrees and full-time employment.
During those years, we averaged 70 family members gathering at my parent's house. Not catered. How we accomplished this every year is a very long and involved story. Great meals, and the family football games made the Kennedy's games seem like local pick-up games.

>5 Hope_H: oh dear, milk. I’ve always hated it.
Back in the day, British kids in primary school were given a small bottle of milk to drink at break time. The bottles would be in a crate left outside the classroom. By break time the milk would be lukewarm and disgusting. I used to try to get one of the boys to drink mine, but frequently got found out by the teacher and made to drink it. On one memorable occasion I threw up over her shoes! Eventually my mum complained and I was given permission not to have it.

Some years later Margaret Thatcher was Education minister and she put an end to the free milk (long after my primary school days had ended), which earned her the nickname Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher :)

My favorite food memory is my mom's beef stew. She made it in an old pressure cooker. I still see that odd dial thingy attached to the pot lid, and watching it shake and rattle under pressure while the stew cooked.

She'd unplug the thing, grab bowls for my brother, sister and me, and fill them up with steaming hot stew.

>10 Tess_W: I can't say my mom was an inspired cook, either. We ate a lot of meat and sides. When I make my own stew these days, I often wonder if hers was actually any good. She lost that pressure cooker in a move, and couldn't be bothered to replace it at the time. She's now 94 and really only enjoys making pies and small loaves like pumpkin these days.

>16 mlfhlibrarian:

Ah, the free school milk. I used to like it in the winter when it was nice and cold and fresh, but in the summer it was warm, slightly off, and pretty disgusting, as you say.

But I still love milk, especially when it's fresh from the cow. I've spent a lot of my life living amongst cattle-keeping communities in Africa, and fresh milk is easily available. I also learned to drink the lumpy curdled milk which is a common way of preserving milk in rural communities where there is no refrigeration available. One of my best milk memories was when I got dysentery deep in the South Sudanese bush, from drinking unboiled swamp water, and I was given a traditional local cure, a huge bowl of milk which was still warm and frothy from the cow. It was delicious, and it apparently worked as the dysentery stopped. We hope to get a cow of our own within the next couple of years so we'll have our own fresh milk.

>2 Crypto-Willobie: That was my mother’s specialty! I thought she invented it!

>19 Penske: Send me some, please!

And it was a thinnish gravy with the ground meat right in it, not a thick heavy gravy like Thanksgiving gravy for mashed potatoes. Her father was from Canada -- maybe that's the secret...

Cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving. My mother and my husband's mother both made the best. I can't seem to make it the way they did. Also, my mother's banana pudding. I can make it but can't eat it anymore.

Worst food memory is having to eat turnip greens when I was a kid. My parents thought that if they forced me to eat them, I would soon learn to love them. Nope, nope, nope. I will not go near them now. I will not eat them here nor there, I will not eat them anywhere.

I’ve been racking my brains to think of food I particularly liked - I was a very picky eater and my mum was rubbish at cooking.
But Ive just remembered marzipan! Celebratory cakes when I was a child were always fruit cakes topped with royal icing, with a layer of marzipan between the icing and cake. Most kids disliked it, so if I went to a Christmas or birthday party I would ask everyone for their marzipan, which they were more than happy to hand over :)
Ditto coffee creams, whenever any member of my family had a box of chocolates I got the coffee creams because everyone else hated them.

I loved 'cooking' with my mother. At around the age of 8 or 9, I was allowed to make my own supper: oeufs mollets aux fines herbes. Soft boil an egg, peel it carefully and fry it gently in some butter with chopped herbs. I cooked my first Sunday lunch when I was 12, but I don't recall exactly what it was. Certainly some type of roast, with at least two veg and potatoes, followed by a pudding of pie and custard.

>20 Crypto-Willobie: Exactly! A very thin gravy!

My grandmother made homemade noodles every Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have tried to replicate, but not quite as good. I can remember some "appalling" conditions, that today, I would cringe at, but then I was too young to understand: she "hung" her noodles over everywhere to dry--the counters, the kitchen cabinet doors, etc. She had flypaper hanging from the ceiling of the kitchen and right above the table!

My mother was what one might call a "good, plain cook". Dinner was always meat, veg, starch. Because we were a family of five, roasts were often on the menu. She made the best leg of lamb and veal breast, simple but so flavorful. (The vegetables, on the other hand, tended to be frozen or canned, definitely uninspiring.)

She also had some excellent desserts in her repertoire. Her apple pie had a wonderfully flaky crust, thanks, I expect, to the Crisco® she used. Then there was the chocolate ice box cake - alternating layers of ladyfingers and chocolate mousse, covered with whipped cream.

I’ve been able to re-visit two key food memories this summer.

I found a tray of tomato plants this spring that promised “yellow pear” shaped fruit. My dad grew these one year. They tasted best plucked warm from the sun. Yep. Still do.

And my neighbor brought me a bowl of little plums. It’s his neighbor’s tree and he gets to harvest what hangs over the fence. Yes! My neighbor had just such a tree too. Only we climbed the tree to reach the fruit. And these are not the plump thin-skinned fruit you can buy in the grocery store. These are slim purple fruit with a slightly thicker skin; and they feel just right on the teeth and have just the right firm texture. Sweet, but not too sweet. Sigh!

Brussel Sprouts - EEEEYuckkkkkk. When I was drafted and going through basic training the drill instructor lined us up one morning and went down the rows and yelled the same question in everyone's face. "What do you think it would take to break you?" In reality, no one really knows what that might be but since we had to shout an answer right back people were coming up with all of the usual tortures - lighted bamboo splinters under the fingernails, burning brands, etc. When he got to me I shouted, "Sergeant, all the Chinese would have to do is threaten to force feed me Brussel Sprouts and I would tell them anything the wanted to know!"

The platoon fell apart laughing. The sergeant was none too pleased. I had to drop and do 100 pushups. It was worth it. :-)

>28 alco261:

Oh dear, I love brussel sprouts, one of my favourite foods as part of a traditional English Sunday roast lunch, and a non-negotiable aspect of Christmas to accompany the turkey, ham and stuffing! Unfortunately they're very difficult to obtain here in Kenya.

Brussel sprouts me too...

Some things have improved over the decades. Beets, for example. The only beet I ate (reluctantly) as a child was dumped from a commercial can and warmed in a pan.* So I never inflicted them on my children. They learned as adults to slice fresh beets and roast them. Oooooh!

And I am informed that Brussels sprouts have been selected for improved taste. But I haven’t ventured there.

*Lack of proper education perhaps. Much like the Chung King chop suey we ate too.

>28 alco261: too funny!

>31 2wonderY: Cut the brussels in half, drizzle with olive oil, garlic, and roast at a really high heat--about 400-425 until they just start to caramelize and yum---my favorite veg, btw. I fix asparagus the same way. If I have a piece of bacon (I have to hide bacon at my house, bundle it up tighter than Ft. Knox) I will crumble that and sprinkle on top.

When I was 18 or 19 on a trip to Hawaii, at a restaurant called Nimbles (no longer there) I had their stuffed New York steak. A nice cut with a pocket sliced in the middle stuffed with shredded crab and baby shrimp. One of the best thing I have EVER eaten!

>33 Tess_W: Hmmmm....that sounds an awful lot like the recipe line from the old folk song Logger Lover...

" I had a logger lover
There's none like him today
If you poured whiskey on it
He'd eat a bale of hay..." :-)

>35 alco261:

Thanks for that reminder about an old song which I had completely forgotten!

I see that you're a logger, and not just a common bum,
For nobody but a logger stirs his coffee with his thumb.

>35 alco261: LOL

I'm not really a picky eater, but 2 things I no longer eat: oats and kale. My Dr. said no no no! And he doesn't believe animals should be fed them, either. He gave me a handout on both, but I can't find it! I don't eat oats because they are not diet friendly (for me) and I don't like the taste of kale, so it's a win-win for me!

Kale is a staple diet here in Kenya, widely eaten, and accessible to the poor, so we eat it regularly. We also grow it, although at the moment our kale plants are rather dormant due to the drought. I'm surprised at your doctor's advice, as from what I've seen kale is generally reckoned to be pretty healthy. My own doctor recently told me to eat more leafy green vegetables.

Early in my teens, an independent ice cream shop opened — this was in the early '60s — in a town on our route home from the cottage, and often we would stop and treat ourselves.

Our two dogs quickly established that they had a constitutional right to the bottom two inches of each cone and whatever ice cream had made its way down there. They also equally quickly learned the meaning of the phrase "ice cream cone" to the extent that when I or my sister raised the question of stopping for ice cream, the dogs immediately woke up and became very excited, whining and jumping around. If my parents decided we didn't have time, or the place was too busy when we got there, they didn't settle down for miles.

"Ice cream cone " became an unmentionable in the car.

So the discussion became, "Can we stop for unmentionable objects?"

"No, not today. We're running late."

And the dogs slept peacefully on.

>39 John5918: Dr did say eat spinach, greens, etc., just not kale!

>4 TempleCat: I also have a fond memory for this dessert. My mother called it "Floating Island," but I think it is the same thing!

>33 Tess_W: Do as Tess suggests but also sprinkle with fresh marjoram/rosemary. I use butter more often, but not the high heat.

My fondest memory is one that has been lost after my mother had dementia.

KOUREMPECHES!!

Mom made them mostly at Christmas because it took several days. They are a Greek cookie, similar to, but better than another Greek Cookie named something like Kourembiedes. You have to hand-chop the almonds to keep the nut oil in tact; then you clarify the butter. we never bought bagged almonds. Our job as children, was to crack the nuts by hand, which we very much could not wait to do. flour just a smidge of sugar, because it is the baked almonds that make them exquisite. form into crescents and sift powdered sugar on top after they come out of the oven. they absolutely melt in your mouth. no artificial almond flavour. similar to the mexican wedding cakes, but much lighter and finer. until the recipe became lost, i used to make them, too. my children all want the recipe.

>42 CarolynBurke7: Yes, I gather Floating Islands is nearly identical to Snow Pudding. With the former, the meringue is spooned into a bowl of custard sauce; in the latter, the custard sauce is spooned over a bowl of meringue (snow). Tomato, tomahto.

There are many variations (vanilla sauce enhanced with lemon, orange, raspberry, strawberry, caramel; egg whites and sugar folded with gelatin, etc.), but this is an quite old-fashioned dish, found in the original Fanny Farmer cookbook, in early Joy of Cooking cookbooks and in the recipe boxes of grandmas from Norway, Sweden, Ireland, France and Australia. I even found it in my venerable Larousse Gastronomique! Everybody, it seems, loves this dessert, understandably. 🥰

I first came across Iles Flottantes in Geneva thirty years ago, ironically in a floating restaurant. Delicious.