Eat, Memory: Tastes That Take You Back - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

snowy · 03-26-2006, 08:53 AM

The NYTimes has a great column in their Food section called "Eat, Memory." Today I read a wonderful piece that really took me by surprise. I had to read the byline twice.

Quote:

Eat, Memory: Bean There
By TUCKER CARLSON

I bet we were the only people in my neighborhood growing up who ate B&M baked beans. We lived in La Jolla, Calif., 25 miles north of the Mexican border, where the only beans you saw were refried or served in salad. B&M beans came in a can, suspended in molasses with a chunk of salt pork. They seemed like the sort of thing you'd eat by the wood stove if you were snowbound in the mountains. They were a little heavy for La Jolla.

That was doubtless the appeal for my father, who came from New England and ate things like shepherd's pie, rhubarb and other mysterious foods that baffled guacamole-stuffed Southern California natives like my brother and me. But we ate the beans anyway, partly out of respect for my father, but also because they were delicious. In the summers, on the way from the Boston airport to vacation in Maine, we'd salute as we drove past the immense brick B&M plant in Portland. I remember wondering who worked there.

One summer during college, I found out. My roommate and I were living in Portland, though not very successfully. I'd applied to Denny's; he'd put his name in for a bartending job. Neither of us heard back. We sold car insurance door to door for a day. Finally we tried a temp agency. The next afternoon we found ourselves wearing white uniforms and hairnets and reporting for duty at the Burnham & Morrill baked-bean factory.

B&M was a strict union shop, closed to all but members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International, local 334, and possibly their sons and nephews. But for some reason that summer the union allowed an exemption for temporary help. We went to work on the second shift at $6.60 an hour.

The B&M plant was built in 1913 and, from what I could tell, hadn't been updated since. Outside, the building was dominated by a towering brick smokestack that belched bean fumes into the salty Portland air. Inside, it was a time capsule. True to advertising, B&M's beans (white pea and red kidney) were cooked as they had always been, in enormous cast-iron pots that were lowered into brick ovens. The pots hung from chains and moved across the plant floor on steel rails suspended from the ceiling.

It looked to me as if someone must have bribed the safety inspectors. Each bean pot was the size of a Fiat. They whipped across the floor at surprisingly high speeds, often pushed by workers who looked as if they could have used a nap. (When your shift starts at 4 in the afternoon, there's ample time to drink before work.) Occasionally a pot would slip the rails and come crashing down. I saw it happen once. The impact sounded like a massive explosion. During our next smoke break, one of my gossiping co-workers claimed that the Burnham & Morrill plant had the highest rate of work-related injuries in all of Pet Inc., then the corporate parent. I believed him.

Most of my jobs were safe enough. One week I scraped charred beans from the insides of the ovens. The next I ran a machine that stacked cans onto pallets. For two weeks after that, I extracted the hot cans in which B&M baked its brown bread. They were made in enormous pressure cookers that looked like missile silos and were called reefers, for some mysterious reason. By the end, I got curious about the bread and tasted some. Surprisingly, it was pretty good.

By July I'd been assigned to a pot-saucing station, mixing ingredients for 16- and 18-ounce containers of barbecue-flavored pea beans. For each pot we combined 21 gallons of hot water with 4.3 ounces of mustard slurry, a portion of ground bacon and 8 ounces of liquid hickory-smoke flavor. I was the liquid-hickory man.

Until that day, I'd naïvely imagined that food ingredients resembled food. Not so with barbecue sauce (i.e., liquid-hickory flavor). The flavor came in white plastic 50-gallon drums, shipped from a chemical plant in New Jersey. I learned right away that you didn't want to get the flavoring on your skin. It was the consistency of oil-based deck sealant and harder to remove. Within an hour every one of my fingers was dyed a deep yellow, the color of nicotine stains. I looked like a wino with a bad Pall Mall habit.

But at least I wasn't bored. The women on the pork line clearly were. I walked by them several times a day as they stood silently at a conveyor belt, dropping pieces of salt pork into cans of beans, one piece per can, eight hours a day. The monotony was enough to make you hope for a falling bean pot.

One day toward the end of my short career at the plant, a supervisor sent me to a storeroom on the third floor. Inside there was a pile of hundreds of bean cans, all of them full. Apparently some of these cans had bad seams. It was impossible to know exactly which ones were defective, but the company wasn't taking chances. Leaky seams meant spoiled product, maybe even botulism. You couldn't just throw them away, for fear that someone would retrieve them from the trash, eat them, get sick and sue. They had to be destroyed. My job was simple: puncture every can.

The assignment came with a special tool, fabricated in the millwright's shop. It looked like a framing hammer with a steel spike welded to the end. It made a satisfying sound as it pierced the cans.

I had a great time for the first hour. Then I came to a bad can. I should have known what it was. It looked different than the others, misshapen and bulging in the middle. If you've ever shot a can of shaving cream with a BB gun, you know what happened next. A plume of fermented beans burst forth like a geyser. The liquid was brown and bubbling and smelled like sewer gas. It hit me directly in the face, spraying into my eyes and mouth, and running down the inside of my collar. I felt like screaming, but there were people watching, so I just kept whacking cans. My uniform stuck to me for the rest of the night.

On my final day of work, I stopped by the company store to pick up some beans, which B&M sold to employees at cost. Cheap beans were considered a key perk of the job, and in fact they were. The labels were often flawed and the cans dented, but the beans were fine, and incredibly inexpensive. For $3, I bought a case of pork-free pea beans in sauce. I threw it on the back seat of my car and drove off.

Last year I was rooting through a cabinet in the laundry room of our summer house looking for Fourth of July fireworks. There, next to a leaky container of Tide, were the beans. I'd bought them fully intending to cook them for dinner. Tastes change over time, though. I worked there in 1989. I haven't had a baked bean since.

I love the articles in this column because in their remembrances of childhood foods or foods associated with a certain time in their lives, the authors remind me of my own tastes, how they have changed, and what I have forgotten.

This article particularly caught my eye because as a child B&M baked beans were a staple of every summer meal, alongside potato salad. My mother liked to serve them with extra barbeque sauce on top. Sometimes she might get fancy and brown up some hamburger to go into the beans. In the winter, she would make us beans and weenies, which almost always featured B&M baked beans. When I want to be reminded of home, these beans are the beans I eat. Even cold and straight from the can they remind me of eating with my family. It's probably the one food easily purchased and had that reminds me of growing up. The rest are homecooked meals with no commercial substitute--ie my mother's clam chowder. Some are more easily mimicked (my mother's pork ribs, her trademark spaghetti sauce) than others, but nothing beats the original.

What are some tastes from your childhood that you remember? What foods take you back to then? What foods remind you of people, places, things?

maleficent · 03-26-2006, 11:01 AM

I did not have a Leave it to Beaver childhood - both my parents worked for as far back as I can remember, and it was my and my sister's responsibility to get dinner on the stove and ready for when mom got home. Dad always got home much later... At some point, when my siblings and I were in our very early teens -- I was probably 11 or 12... My parents decided that family dinners were going to happen... with their schedules - it was tough - but one night a week - generally on saturday or sunday we had family dinner in the living room -- generally fondue was served - whether it be chicken, beef, or cheese fondue -- it wasa meal that took a while to eat... and encouraged communication amongst the family... (well they tried to anyhow)

I recently tried making cheese fondue - and it was honestly the worst swill I've ever made - and was embarassed to serve it it was so awful... It wasn't that bad when Iw as a kid - but I guess it's true - -you can't go home again

Chicken soup is another memory of childhood -- my father, for a while developed a hobby of cooking on sundays and would make chicken soup... somewhere in his vast years of high education, he never quite grasped the part where when you make chicken soup-- you make the broth -- strain it -- then throw all the crap in it -- nope - not dead ole dad... He'd make the broth - then put the rice and stuff into it-- and when you ate it -- you'd have to pick thru the bones... To this day.. I absolutely cannot stand chicken soup...

Rodney · 03-27-2006, 08:42 PM

Campbell's Tomato Soup. So tomatoey, so incredibly acidic. Eat some when you had a cold sore, and scream with pain.

Mom would serve it to me when I had a cold. A few sniffs of the hot, corrosive steam rising off the soup would go a long way to clearing my sinuses. And I'm not kidding.

I can't say I cared for it by itself. But one of my special treats was to dunk half a well-dress a well-dressed tuna salad sandwich into the tomato soup before eating it. I thought that was delicious -- and I still do. Hand me half a sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup, and I'm ten years old again, sitting down for Saturday lunch at the old kitchen table with the oilcloth cover to eat a bowl of C&T with a tuna san.

ryfo · 03-27-2006, 10:50 PM

My mums Golden Syrup Dumplings remind me of being 10 years old and only having an old kero heater to heat our house. It was a small house but as we all sat around the heater trying to keep warm while it was blowing a gale outside, my mums GSD would do the job for the inside of out tummies and it didnt matter that our noses were a bit cold. MMMM i wish i still lived at home

Charlatan · 03-28-2006, 06:11 AM

There are a few things that bring back childhood memories:

Aylmer's Tomato Soup (never Campbell's). I would only eat it if I could put in enough Premium Plus crackers to make it into a paste.

Shake and bake pork chops with apple sauce and a side of Kraft Dinner.

My Mom's Christmas cookies. Especially, the date rolls she makes. She still makes them at Christmas.

Thinking of these meals brings back memories of the apartment my Mom and I lived in... especially the kitchen with its big floral pattern and funky kitchen set (I wish I had that set today, as well as the teak dinning room set).

fresnelly · 03-28-2006, 07:07 AM

My grandmother's homemade burgers that had chopped onions in them. I didn't actually like them at time, but I can imagine them very clearly to this day.

Also when we were kids, I used to put a dollop of peanut butter in a bowl, and cover it with honey and icing sugar. I can still taste it; even crave it. In fact, I may still be riding the sugar high. I wouldn't dare try to recreate it today though.

I've always felt that smell was the strongest sense for evoking time and place. The smell of fried dough and cigarette smoke snaps me back to amusement parks with incredible force.

I guess it's the junk foods that really take me back.

maleficent · 03-28-2006, 07:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fresnelly

The smell of fried dough and cigarette smoke snaps me back to amusement parks with incredible force.

mmmm zeppoles... with lots of powdered sugar - hot from the bag... takes me back to the NYC Street Fairs... especially San Generro...

Charlatan · 03-28-2006, 07:33 AM

Interesting that you mention smells. There are two smells that remind me of my grandparents.

One is the smell of a grease trap. For a time, they lived in a small apartment over a Chinese Restaurant in a strip mall. The back entrance had this smell. I found out later in life it was the smell of the grease trap where the restaurant dummped its used oil.

The other is the smell of dirty cigarettes in the garbage. I didn't know what the smell was until I was in University and one of my roommates was a smoker. I went to put something in the garbage and the smell hit me with a vivid memory of my grandparent's apartment.

Sultana · 03-28-2006, 08:14 AM

Every once in a a while my mom would have these things we called corn pops. They were basically sweet cornbread muffin top-like things. We'd toast them and eat them with butter and honey. I can occasionally recreate that exact taste, but it's tricky.

My grandmother made Mexican food, in the most Polish way possible. The only "spices" she'd use were salt, pepper, and vinegar. Still, the tacos were very original to her, and great tasting--just absolutely nothing like Mexican food. I also recall her cheese enchiladas fondly, a Christmas staple.

Non-food smells that remind me strongly of my grandma are Chanel #5 + cigarette smoke, together.

Mister Coaster · 03-28-2006, 08:33 AM

Good article. I remember numerous of my mom's "old favorites" but sadly she doesn't remember any of them. Well, it's not so much that she doesn't remember, but she lives alone now and never cooks anymore, and cooking has become too big of a hassle. Every once in a while she will have us over for dinner, all she wants to do is go out to eat or get a big frozen lasagna.

I'll have to swipe her recipes and see if I can recreate those dishes. Funny thing is, she never fancied herself as much of a cook, but I can't really remember not liking anything she ever made. With the exception of plain steamed green veggies, but come on.

As for processed foods, I haven't had a twinkie in probably over 10 years, but I'm sure they taste the same, and I used to eat them like CRAZY. Oh, and those trashy little pies with fruit/pudding for filling, damn, I lived on those.

Brewmaniac · 03-28-2006, 12:49 PM

I remember many exciting times waiting for what seemed like hours with that beautiful, unmistakable smell of pasties(Cornish) cooking in the oven.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasty#Ingredients

My earliest memory was at Hilltop(my grandparents big old summer house on lake Michigan) and all the buzz between the kids was we’re having Pasties for dinner. My grandmother always made it fun by making them the size of your foot. It was best to stay out of the kitchen as not to get in the way of this magical meal in creation. Then we all crowed in the enormously long table that seemed to seat dozens of cousins.
Then complete silence from the chaos as grandfather said the blessing. Then time to dress the pasty, cut them in half add a little mustard(except for cousin John who didn’t like it, I think he inherited it from Uncle Ed) and some catsup(to this day they’re the only thing I put catsup on, I don’t know who I got that from). Pick them up in your hands, yum. They tasted heavenly and every homemade pasty since, is the best one I ever had! As soon as we gobbled them down, the spying began on who only ate half and what kind of bargain could be made to get that precious leftover prize.

The tradition continues in our house as my wife makes them just as good if not better than my grandmother.

Poppinjay · 03-28-2006, 01:33 PM

Tucker Carlson wrote something thoughtful. Hell is entering a full contingent in the Winter Olympics.

But I have to give him props.

I was thinking about this the other day. THE classic smell and taste that takes me back is hot chocolate on a cold day. One day when we had, no kidding, a four foot snow with 12 foot drifts (we lived at the foot of the Rockies at the time). No parents would let their kids out until it was manageable. Lots of hot chocolate by the fire.

cellophanedeity · 03-28-2006, 02:00 PM

For me, it's just something simple.

Oatmeal with enough brown sugar in it to get you bouncing off the walls. Mum would sometimes wake up early on weekends to make it for my family, and we'd spend hours after just talking.

Sometimes we still do that.

snowy · 03-28-2006, 05:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Poppinjay

Tucker Carlson wrote something thoughtful. Hell is entering a full contingent in the Winter Olympics.

But I have to give him props.

FINALLY, someone noticed WHO wrote the article...I thought it was amazing that he COULD write something I liked.

noodle · 03-29-2006, 04:18 AM

Cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, my mom's Mexican wedding cookies and Quakertown Crumb Pie (Similar to pecan pie without the nuts... it's a Mennonite thing), pancakes, broccoli/cheese/rice casserole.

The horrors of childhood included sloppy joes, baked beans and cottage cheese mixed, and the Dreaded Leftover Meals: Freezer Soup and Leftover Casserole. Freezer soup consists of all of the leftover veggies from the past few months that got tossed in the freezer after dinner. Canned corn, green beans, tomato sauce, carrots... then heated up and with chicken bouillion and water added. Yuck! Same for the casserole with with meat and rice or something added.

I couldn't eat Ragu for seven years after my father's car accident and my brother's birth nine days later because that's all we had for three weeks running. People mean to help and spaghetti sauce freezes and refrigerates well. We were never so glad to see my mom come home with my brother six weeks later.

Sage · 03-29-2006, 09:38 AM

Hrm.... I'd have to say the venison roast that this guy where my dad works makes. He'll make two big pans of it and bring it in on the weekends to feed the weekend guys there (there's only twelve or so of them) and everyone brings something different to share. Every time he did this my mom and I would go and visit dad on his lunch hour, and eat with him.... Now that I'm older and realize how much my dad loves me, I see how special it was to go eat lunch with him at work...

No one can make venison roast like that guy tho!

Rodney · 03-29-2006, 01:16 PM

A lot of these recollections, including mine, do hinge in part on smell. Smell is a really strong memory trigger.

Psycho Dad · 03-29-2006, 03:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

The other is the smell of dirty cigarettes in the garbage.

Cigarettes and coffee grounds? That's what I remember from my grandmother's kitchen. From time to time I'll go in the smoker's breakroom and someone will have emptied ashtrays and coffee filters into the trash. Takes me back to when I was a little boy.

My other smell memory comes from a girl I used to date. She worked in a hamburger joint and I'd take her out to the sticks after she got off work in my old car. I can't walk by a greasy hamburger joint now without being reminded of her.

As far as food memories go though I can't seem to really remember any. I don't know if that comes from being a picky eater as a kid, there never being any special dishes that I can connect to an event or if it was because my family sucked at cooking. Well except for the cafeteria at school. That's no good memory there I can assure you.

03-26-2006, 11:01 AM	#2 (permalink)
maleficent Junkie Moderator Emeritus Location: Chicago	I did not have a Leave it to Beaver childhood - both my parents worked for as far back as I can remember, and it was my and my sister's responsibility to get dinner on the stove and ready for when mom got home. Dad always got home much later... At some point, when my siblings and I were in our very early teens -- I was probably 11 or 12... My parents decided that family dinners were going to happen... with their schedules - it was tough - but one night a week - generally on saturday or sunday we had family dinner in the living room -- generally fondue was served - whether it be chicken, beef, or cheese fondue -- it wasa meal that took a while to eat... and encouraged communication amongst the family... (well they tried to anyhow) I recently tried making cheese fondue - and it was honestly the worst swill I've ever made - and was embarassed to serve it it was so awful... It wasn't that bad when Iw as a kid - but I guess it's true - -you can't go home again Chicken soup is another memory of childhood -- my father, for a while developed a hobby of cooking on sundays and would make chicken soup... somewhere in his vast years of high education, he never quite grasped the part where when you make chicken soup-- you make the broth -- strain it -- then throw all the crap in it -- nope - not dead ole dad... He'd make the broth - then put the rice and stuff into it-- and when you ate it -- you'd have to pick thru the bones... To this day.. I absolutely cannot stand chicken soup... __________________ Free your heart from hatred. Free your mind from worries. Live simply. Give more. Expect less.

03-28-2006, 06:11 AM	#5 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	There are a few things that bring back childhood memories: Aylmer's Tomato Soup (never Campbell's). I would only eat it if I could put in enough Premium Plus crackers to make it into a paste. Shake and bake pork chops with apple sauce and a side of Kraft Dinner. My Mom's Christmas cookies. Especially, the date rolls she makes. She still makes them at Christmas. Thinking of these meals brings back memories of the apartment my Mom and I lived in... especially the kitchen with its big floral pattern and funky kitchen set (I wish I had that set today, as well as the teak dinning room set). __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke

03-28-2006, 07:07 AM	#6 (permalink)
fresnelly Functionally Appropriate Location: Toronto	My grandmother's homemade burgers that had chopped onions in them. I didn't actually like them at time, but I can imagine them very clearly to this day. Also when we were kids, I used to put a dollop of peanut butter in a bowl, and cover it with honey and icing sugar. I can still taste it; even crave it. In fact, I may still be riding the sugar high. I wouldn't dare try to recreate it today though. I've always felt that smell was the strongest sense for evoking time and place. The smell of fried dough and cigarette smoke snaps me back to amusement parks with incredible force. I guess it's the junk foods that really take me back. __________________ Building an artificial intelligence that appreciates Mozart is easy. Building an A.I. that appreciates a theme restaurant is the real challenge - Kit Roebuck - Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life Last edited by fresnelly; 03-28-2006 at 07:23 AM..

03-28-2006, 07:33 AM	#8 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	Interesting that you mention smells. There are two smells that remind me of my grandparents. One is the smell of a grease trap. For a time, they lived in a small apartment over a Chinese Restaurant in a strip mall. The back entrance had this smell. I found out later in life it was the smell of the grease trap where the restaurant dummped its used oil. The other is the smell of dirty cigarettes in the garbage. I didn't know what the smell was until I was in University and one of my roommates was a smoker. I went to put something in the garbage and the smell hit me with a vivid memory of my grandparent's apartment. __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke

03-28-2006, 08:14 AM	#9 (permalink)
Sultana Falling Angel Location: L.A. L.A. land	Every once in a a while my mom would have these things we called corn pops. They were basically sweet cornbread muffin top-like things. We'd toast them and eat them with butter and honey. I can occasionally recreate that exact taste, but it's tricky. My grandmother made Mexican food, in the most Polish way possible. The only "spices" she'd use were salt, pepper, and vinegar. Still, the tacos were very original to her, and great tasting--just absolutely nothing like Mexican food. I also recall her cheese enchiladas fondly, a Christmas staple. Non-food smells that remind me strongly of my grandma are Chanel #5 + cigarette smoke, together. __________________ "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." - Matt Groening My goal? To fulfill my potential.

03-27-2006, 08:42 PM	#3 (permalink)
Rodney Observant Ruminant Location: Rich Wannabe Hippie Town	Campbell's Tomato Soup. So tomatoey, so incredibly acidic. Eat some when you had a cold sore, and scream with pain. Mom would serve it to me when I had a cold. A few sniffs of the hot, corrosive steam rising off the soup would go a long way to clearing my sinuses. And I'm not kidding. I can't say I cared for it by itself. But one of my special treats was to dunk half a well-dress a well-dressed tuna salad sandwich into the tomato soup before eating it. I thought that was delicious -- and I still do. Hand me half a sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup, and I'm ten years old again, sitting down for Saturday lunch at the old kitchen table with the oilcloth cover to eat a bowl of C&T with a tuna san.

03-27-2006, 10:50 PM	#4 (permalink)
ryfo Psycho Location: melbourne australia	My mums Golden Syrup Dumplings remind me of being 10 years old and only having an old kero heater to heat our house. It was a small house but as we all sat around the heater trying to keep warm while it was blowing a gale outside, my mums GSD would do the job for the inside of out tummies and it didnt matter that our noses were a bit cold. MMMM i wish i still lived at home

03-28-2006, 08:33 AM	#10 (permalink)
Mister Coaster Big & Brassy Location: The "Canyon"	Good article. I remember numerous of my mom's "old favorites" but sadly she doesn't remember any of them. Well, it's not so much that she doesn't remember, but she lives alone now and never cooks anymore, and cooking has become too big of a hassle. Every once in a while she will have us over for dinner, all she wants to do is go out to eat or get a big frozen lasagna. I'll have to swipe her recipes and see if I can recreate those dishes. Funny thing is, she never fancied herself as much of a cook, but I can't really remember not liking anything she ever made. With the exception of plain steamed green veggies, but come on. As for processed foods, I haven't had a twinkie in probably over 10 years, but I'm sure they taste the same, and I used to eat them like CRAZY. Oh, and those trashy little pies with fruit/pudding for filling, damn, I lived on those. __________________ If you have any poo... fling it NOW!

03-28-2006, 12:49 PM	#11 (permalink)
Brewmaniac Searching for the perfect brew!	I remember many exciting times waiting for what seemed like hours with that beautiful, unmistakable smell of pasties(Cornish) cooking in the oven. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasty#Ingredients My earliest memory was at Hilltop(my grandparents big old summer house on lake Michigan) and all the buzz between the kids was we’re having Pasties for dinner. My grandmother always made it fun by making them the size of your foot. It was best to stay out of the kitchen as not to get in the way of this magical meal in creation. Then we all crowed in the enormously long table that seemed to seat dozens of cousins. Then complete silence from the chaos as grandfather said the blessing. Then time to dress the pasty, cut them in half add a little mustard(except for cousin John who didn’t like it, I think he inherited it from Uncle Ed) and some catsup(to this day they’re the only thing I put catsup on, I don’t know who I got that from). Pick them up in your hands, yum. They tasted heavenly and every homemade pasty since, is the best one I ever had! As soon as we gobbled them down, the spying began on who only ate half and what kind of bargain could be made to get that precious leftover prize. The tradition continues in our house as my wife makes them just as good if not better than my grandmother. __________________ "That's a joke... I say, that's a joke, son" Last edited by Brewmaniac; 03-28-2006 at 01:09 PM..

03-28-2006, 01:33 PM	#12 (permalink)
Poppinjay You had me at hello Location: DC/Coastal VA	Tucker Carlson wrote something thoughtful. Hell is entering a full contingent in the Winter Olympics. But I have to give him props. I was thinking about this the other day. THE classic smell and taste that takes me back is hot chocolate on a cold day. One day when we had, no kidding, a four foot snow with 12 foot drifts (we lived at the foot of the Rockies at the time). No parents would let their kids out until it was manageable. Lots of hot chocolate by the fire. __________________ I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

03-28-2006, 02:00 PM	#13 (permalink)
cellophanedeity Heliotrope Location: A warm room	For me, it's just something simple. Oatmeal with enough brown sugar in it to get you bouncing off the walls. Mum would sometimes wake up early on weekends to make it for my family, and we'd spend hours after just talking. Sometimes we still do that. __________________ who am I to refuse the universe? -Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

03-29-2006, 09:38 AM	#16 (permalink)
Sage hoarding all the big girl panties since 2005 Location: North side	Hrm.... I'd have to say the venison roast that this guy where my dad works makes. He'll make two big pans of it and bring it in on the weekends to feed the weekend guys there (there's only twelve or so of them) and everyone brings something different to share. Every time he did this my mom and I would go and visit dad on his lunch hour, and eat with him.... Now that I'm older and realize how much my dad loves me, I see how special it was to go eat lunch with him at work... No one can make venison roast like that guy tho! __________________ Sage knows our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's She answers hard acrostics, has a pretty taste for paradox She quotes in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus In conics she can floor peculiarities parabolous -C'hi

03-29-2006, 01:16 PM	#17 (permalink)
Rodney Observant Ruminant Location: Rich Wannabe Hippie Town	A lot of these recollections, including mine, do hinge in part on smell. Smell is a really strong memory trigger.