I just made scrambled eggs for breakfast and every single time I make eggs, I am transported back to being about 8 or 9. My sister, Christine, went through quite a scrambled egg obsession and she always asked for “scrambled eggs with chewy cheese.” Chewy cheese was just mild cheddar, but if you made the scrambled eggs just right, you would take them off the heat when the cheese just started to melt so it would be ooey gooey in the scrambled eggs. And so, scrambled eggs with chewy cheese became the official name of the dish. And a perennial favorite.
How does food do that? Take us back inside a memory, as if we are really there. And we all have those food memories. For my friend Kim, it is sandwiches. In her family, they would have sandwich night, and the idea of putting meat and cheese between two slices of bread takes her right back to sitting at the table with her parents and her siblings.
My dad is having lamb chops with mint jelly today, and just hearing him talk about it transported me back to Sunday dinners when my Poppy Reeve would join us. He would come over in the afternoon to watch golf, have a Manhattan and some Ritz crackers with pimento spread, and we would all gather around the dining room table for a real Sunday dinner. Lamb chops with mint jelly was one of his favorites.
Maybe it’s my nostalgia combined with my sense of storytelling, but I have so many food memories. French toast always reminds me of my dad. It was pretty much his signature dish. Macaroni and cheese reminds me of my dear friend, Chip Hopkins, who passed a few years back. When we were kids he taught me to put ketchup on macaroni and cheese and I did that for years and years. So many foods remind me of my sister, Chris, she is intertwined in nearly every memory I have, but one of my favorites (besides scrambled eggs) is cream cheese. We decided that if we could slice and eat cheddar cheese, we should be able to slice and eat cream cheese, and so we regularly would eat spoonfuls (or fingerfuls) of cream cheese as we passed the fridge. I’m sorry, Mom, if this is something you didn’t know until now.
What are your food memories? How do you hold your family close in the food you eat or the way you prepare meals for the people you love? I’d love to hear your stories.