Food Memories

At this time of year our thoughts turn to food. All thoughts of dieting cease to exist for the next two months at least. Those of us, who have sat down to many a Thanksgiving dinner, have food memories we still carry with us. My food memories, of the taste and smell of the season, were all made possible because of my mother, Evangeline.

My mother was well known as an excellent cook. My father was a meat and potato man, however, so she didn’t get to experiment very much with our daily menu. He needed to know what was “in” everything, which canceled out many casseroles.

 He had what to us were weird ideas about food. For instance, he loved apple pie, but the smell of an apple once we bit into it, made him nauseous. I think it had something to do with the fact that he had to harvest the apples when he was a kid on the farm. The smell of rotting apples piled up on the ground is not always pleasant. In any event, we had to dispose of our apple cores in the oil barrel we used for a garbage container out by the garage as soon as we’d finished eating the apple.

His taste in some foods didn’t always match ours. He liked bleu cheese and added it to anything he could. If he didn’t have bleu cheese, he’d add whatever cheese we had or a dollop of peanut butter. We always thought his old bleu cheese smelled like stinky feet. He also loved mushrooms. My mother didn’t and refused to cook them for him. Consequently he’d go out and pick wild mushrooms and cook them himself. He was expert at telling the difference between mushrooms and the poisonous toadstools. He knew the best places to find them too.

I never liked his old “stinky” bleu cheese or his love of mushrooms until I got out on my own. Now I love both and use them in whatever I’m cooking when I can. Bleu cheese dressing is my favorite on salad or with celery when eating chicken wings. I also developed a recipe for stuffed mushrooms which I believe I’ve added to the Maine Recipe blog. My Dad loved those mushrooms and I made them for him as often as I could when I came home to visit.

My best food memories, however, come to me over the holiday season. If I have occasion to replicate them myself during the season, I do. The smells and tastes we remember bring us closer to those who are no longer with us. I often feel the presence of my mother when I put a turkey in the oven and it begins to fill the house with that special smell we all remember.

Other holiday tastes and smells I remember is the smell of creamed onions cooking slowly on the stove along with all the other holiday vegetables like squash, sweet potatoes, and turnip. One year here in the south I put together all the things my mother used to make on Thanksgiving, including stuffing that didn’t involve cornbread like they use here in the south. Everyone loved my efforts that day. It was a lot of work and I could appreciate how much effort it took my mother to put together a meal like that for 10 to 15 people and have it all done at the same time and be hot at the same time. That was quite a trick in the days with no microwaves.

Do you have some of these same taste and smell memories? How about the smell of New England baked beans cooking in the pot; the smell of an apple pie cooking; the taste of hot homemade pan gravy you’ve poured all over your plate full of turkey, mashed potatoes, veggies, and stuffing?

I don’t make big meals like that much anymore. When I get the chance to experience a holiday dinner such as the one my mother always put together, I jump at the chance. I have noticed how much you all enjoy reading my Maine Recipe blog and the November Recipe blog for this month. I would not begin to instruct all you Maine cooks on how to cook a turkey. You all know how to do that. If you are young and this is your first year cooking a bird, I expect you’ll do what I did when I cooked my first turkey—call your mother.

FYI: If you’re looking for ways to decorate for the holidays, I found two good sites online for table centerpieces from Martha Stewart; Thanksgiving crafts to do with the kids; how-to videos and more. www.holidash.com had a bunch of ideas and www.diylive.com has more including how to make a cornucopia. If you have the time for that, they are both good sources. 

Thanks for listening.