Early Childhood Food Memories

[Rosie]

What childhood food memories do you have? Were you interested in food/cooking as a child? Did you help with the cooking? What were your favorite childhood dishes? What about holiday feasts?

[chefg]

Rosie:

Starting at age 5 my family were involved in restaurants. My mother and father owned a restaurant through my high school years, and that is where I spent alot of my time.

Some of my childhood memories are somewhat strange, maybe that was the start of my fastination for unique flavor combos. I vividly remember my uncle showing me how to wrap a "burger blanket" pickle around a bundle of fries. Delicous.

You grow up with lasagna, stew, and mac and cheese all the comfort foods that are to familar to us all. Same with holidays, dry turkey ruled the wasteland.

[Hub-UK2]

Early memories are of going to visit my grandmother in South Wales where lunch would be faggotts and peas floating in Bovril gravy and eaten with large slabs of white bread liberally spread with butter.

Real comfort food if I can get hold of decent faggotts. It isn't worth making them just for myself.

("Faggots", in British English, are meatballs, fried or cooked in sauce)

Edited March 7, 2003 by Jonathan Day (log)

[KatieLoeb]

I very clearly recall going to the local Chinese restaurant with my parents and always ordering the Lobster Cantonese. This was the first Chinese dish I loved beside Wonton soup and I still love it today. Shrimp in Lobster sauce can still call up those tastes and textures for me.

I also remember watching my Cuban mom make her infamous pots of Frijoles Negros. I still wish I'd written down that recipe, but have gotten a reasonably close facsimile through practice. I still adore that smoky aroma of cooking black beans and boiling rice wafting through the house {sigh}

I used to love to watch my mom cook. She wasn't a particularly accomplished cook, and wouldn't follow a recipe to save her own skin, but the few things she made well still have no equal.