What tastes like home?

[pamjsa]

Perhaps because today is Mother's Day, I've been thinking about some of the staples in my own mother's repertoire. My mom was a pretty standard 1970's-issue cook, meaning we ate a lot of one-can-of-this-mixed-with-one-can-of-that casseroles while I was growing up; still, there are several things I associate with her only, things that taste like home, whether she makes them for me or I make them for myself.

One of those things is what my family has always referred to as The Birthday Cake--a white cake with lemon filling (nothing fancy, usually just cooled lemon pudding spread between the layers) and a very light marshmallow frosting, called "Happy Birthday Frosting" on the recipe card I cribbed it from. That combination of lemon and marshmallow probably sounds disgusting, but it tastes like home to me.

What tastes like home to you?

Edited May 8, 2005 by pamjsa (log)

[Pan]

[...]What tastes like home to you?

←

Chicken soup with whole chicken or at least chicken parts in it, not consomme or stock (like Teresa's, my local Polish diner makes). Flanken soup with dill, parsnips, beans, pepper, etc. Split pea soup. Pasta with tomato sauce and meatballs. Lion's head soup. Roast beef. Roast chicken. Pot roast. Apple pie. Homemade chocolate pudding. Matzo ball or chicken noodle soup. Livers and onions pan-fried with sherry or marsala. Chicken or veal marsala. My father's special omelettes (frittate, really). Osso buco. Swedish lamb with coffee, milk (cream), pepper, and pureed carrots and onions (from the Swedish Princess cookbook). My grandma's stuffed cabbage that uses dried fruits and ginger snaps along with chopped meat (beef) and rice. These are home food by my mother, father, and grandmother, and only a partial list.

Then, there are the homey things my fictive grandmother, Mrs. Carr made, which come from the great black cooking of the South: Cornbread, peach cobbler, sweet potato pie, etc.

And then there's Malaysian cooking that feels like the place that was my second home for two years of my childhood: Kangkung belacan, petai belacan, kacang panjang belacan, kacang belendir belacan (etc.), gulai ayam, gulai kambing (etc.; gulai=curry), asam dishes (=with tamarind), chili udang galah, roti canai, laksa, ulam, kueh bakar, dodol. Some of these things I remember from my childhood, like kueh bakar (roasted cakes) roasted over a real wooden stove, essentially no longer exist, but many of them do still exist.

I think this thread will overlap considerably with How we ate growing up.

[tryska]

egg with rice or meatball curry with puris.

[lesfen]

Poop Soup. LOL. My mom's veg beef soup that she made with shredded cabbage. No one's ever managed to come close to it.

[jgarner53]

Mom's turkey noodle soup, made the day after Thanksgiving, with thick homestyle egg noodles and enriched with leftover gravy. I've made turkeys just to make that soup.

[sassybat]

when we're sick, both my mom and my grandma make a kind of macaroni soup, with homemade beef or pork broth, macaroni, and slices of beef or pork. it's what i miss most now that i don't live at home anymore, because it's hard for me to recreate, especially when i'm sick and don't want to cook.

[phedre]

Mom's pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy. The roast is cooked all day at low temperatures, so it literally falls apart. SOOOOO good. With super soft whipped potatoes covered in gravy.

And homemade bread. We never had storebought bread growing up. Every time mom made a batch, she'd make 'buns off a loaf', where she'd take some of the raw dough, cut off small bits, flatten them, and fry them in lard. We'd eat them hot, smeared with butter. mmm....

[Chris Amirault]

Rice-a-Roni. Draw your own picture, people....

[fou de Bassan]

Does burnt Lipton Onion soup mix count? If not, then I got nothin'.

[reesek]

holidaywise-

apple pie with crumb topping (and soggy crust)

day after thanksgiving turkey soup - thickened with leftover stuffing

ambrosia

sweet gherkins

olive (fingers)

everyday-wise

egg rolls and shrimp with lobster sauce - every sunday night for 15 years...

pork loin - in (too) many guises

wet spaghetti

oversized salad ingredients

entenmanns cookies

fiery chili

[munchymom]

Holiday meals come to mind - turkey and stuffing at Thanksgiving and Christmas, followed by my dad's wonderful turkey pot pie the next day, and turkey soup the day after that. My mom makes fabulous Christmas cookies and buche de noel. Everyday food - well, I never heard of anyone else eating this, but every so often I get a craving and have to indulge - English muffins, spread with cream cheese and Underwood deviled ham, then toasted under the broiler. We had it all the time when I was a kid. Oh, and blueberry pancakes. My parents always freeze a bunch of blueberries during the summer so they can toss them into pancakes year round. My dad's scrambled eggs, made with a couple of slices of American cheese melted in (that's the way I make them now too.) My mom's barbecue sauce, on barbecued chicken.

[kellycolorado]

I just remember lots of food- Meat, two veggies and a starch usually. But I liked when she'd make homemade spaghetti with meat sauce (kind of like a bolognese) from the back of the Mueller's spaghetti box. She was very insistent that I pick up the Contadina tomato paste and canned tomatoes, and the Mueller's spaghetti. She was very brand specific now that I think back.

The only think she made boxed for us was the Kraft mac n cheese with the little can of cheese and rice a roni because she couldn't get rice right. She would often bake a dozen chicken wings or other chicken parts because they were cheap. She got us to love our vegetables early and I'm thankful for that. Acorn squash with butter and brown sugar, cauliflower with white sauce, yum. All on food stamps and ADC while the neighbor kids were eating tuna casseroles and strange cream-of-mushroom casseroles and hot dogs and stuff.

[WolfChef]

Lefse

[daniellewiley]

Cottage cheese and noodles

Cheese souffle (which I hated, but tasting it now would remind me of home)

Apple Cake

Minestrone

[jglazer75]

Green Bean Casserole. Yum.

[jilli42]

Creamed chip beef on buttered toast. No one makes it like Mom.

What makes me think of my second home (grandparents house) whenever I eat it are fresh from the garden vegetables, spicy dill pickles, from scratch cakes & pies.

Rainbow trout, crawdads. I used to catch both of these in the river behind their house and my grandmother would boil up the crawdads while frying the trout in a cast iron skillet.

And Doublemint gum. My grandfather chews this gum everyday. Every time I see a pack I think of him.

I used to spend lots of time with my grandparents. My grandmother is a wonderful cook. I learned a lot watching her in the kitchen. She makes a different dessert every night.

My grandfather has an incurable sweet tooth. I swear he only eats "real" food because otherwise my grandmother won't let him have his dessert !

[Lone Star]

Fried chicken

Biscuits and gravy

Black-eyed peas

Cornbread (not sweet!)

[jess mebane]

good-sized pot of pinto beans, monkey bread, cherry cobbler and cheese grits. A green salad with good tomatoes.

Sometimes I think I would make a fine vegan, then I go home to visit, and my dad flops a big steak on my plate and says, "God gave us those sharp teeth for a reason, gal. Eat." He has an E.B. White way of clearing these things up for me.

[purplewiz]

Mom's Potato Salad. Mom used to have to balance it just right - my father liked it sweet, and I liked it vinegary, so just when it was at the point when Dad thought it too sour and I thought it too sweet it was perfect.

I have the recipe, and frankly, I like my more vinegary version better, but it's that balanced one that tastes like every summer picnic we ever had.

Along with deviled eggs and shrimp macaroni salad.

Marcia.

[kurl]

Friday night shabbat dinners, an amalgamation of Syrian and American food:

White Rice with Fasoliyyeh (beans in a tomato sauce)

Fried Kibbe

Roast Chicken

Peas with "Kibbe Meatballs"

Challah

[petite tête de chou]

Anything that my mom makes tastes like home to me. Swear to god mom's add a special seasoning! Well, mine at least.

White bean and ham soup

Meatloaf with tomato sauce glaze

Zucchini bread- warm or cold with butter

Butter cookies

Thankgiving- turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, et cetera

Cold fried chicken with potato salad

She makes the best iced tea, too!

[Pam R]

Like many of you, soup tastes (and smells) like home to me - many memories of chicken soup from my Baba Raizel's house - every year to break the Yom Kippur fast she'd make a milky vegetable soup with whatever she had from the garden and noodles - nobody had the recipe (was there a recipe?) but I've tried to recreate it. My mother loves any and every type of soup, so it wasn't unusual to come home to some type of 'everything but the kitchen sink' soup.

Garlic. If you put enough garlic in something it'll remind me of my Baba and father - mainly in the form of Garlic brisket, but there was always something with lots of garlic.

Baba Irene used to make a casserole with hamburgers and cans of cream of mushroom soup - i've recreated it at home with a non-dairy cream of mushroom soup and that will always remind me of her.

Ice Cream Soup - this was my Zaida's specialty. When my sister and I would be over at his place, we'd get big bowls of ice cream and stir it up until it was mostly melted and soupy. Now I prefer my ice cream to be hard.... but every once in a while I like a bowl of ice cream soup.

[Hest88]

My mother was very good with seafood, not so good with other dishes. So, home to me tastes like:

Dungeness crab with ginger and scallions

Stir-fried spicy clams

Also:

Jook with preserved vegetables

Pork bone soup

Boiled beef soup

[Jenny McClure]

My mum's homemade, vegetable soup, with lots of barley. Her leek & potato soup. Homemade wheaton bread. Mince, mashed potatoes and heinz baked beans. Sundays roasts with roasted potatoes, carrots& parsnips, courgette au gratin and lots of gravy....I could be here all day. I think I'm getting nostagic. It's been over a year since I've been home or seen my Mum.

[naguere]

Pobs

When you are small and poorly. Cubes of stale white bread with scalded full cream milk poured on and then sprinkled with white sugar. (Thank you mother)