Childhood clues that you'd become a foodie...

[evilhomer]

they teethed me on bagels

[Country Cook]

I had no choice! it was my families fault. My sister taught me to make scrambled eggs (supervised) when I was four or five and I never looked back.

[Rebecca263]

My memories are of me deciding to make "healthy" brownies and dumping a bottle of vitamins in the batter! And then, in 5th grade I made hummous tahina for my public speaking assignment, and everyone in class had garlic breath contests for the rest of the day! No, really my DAUGHTER is the foodie, from toddlerhood she adored pate, sushi in all it's guises, carpaccio and caviar. She remembers all of our travels by the cemeteries and the food. She loves New Orleans, and wants to get married there, just so we can eat at Muriel's! She actually has a favorite brand of ketchup(Gefen). Heck, she's even dragged me on day long road trips for certain Strawberry festivals! And, we have to bring our own balsamic vinegar, in case they only serve berries with whipped cream or chocolate, or how can we eat the berries for 'dinner' too? One funny bit, I once came into the kitchen to find my 16 month old kneeling with a cracker in front of the cat's plate (Fancy Feast)... she turned to me, grinned and said "Mmmm, pate! Needs something, Mommy." OK, she's not just a foodie, she's a critic! I love this thread.

[Sartain]

One of my first solid foods was duck hearts with rice. An early childhood favorite that remains is braised pork tongue.

Loved durians at first bite at the tender age of 4. My sister, on the other hand, ran screaming from the room.

I used to help my nanny wash out pigs' lungs for soup, pick out the debris from birds' nests and clean mung bean when I was 6 or 7. This was around about the same time that I learned how to make steamed custard too.

My family used to have me pick out all the fruit at the stalls. This was after a few weeks of them noticing that I had picked out all the sweetest, tastiest fruit from fruit bowl and left them with "inferior product."

[Pan]

Rebecca, how old is your daughter now?

[BCinBC]

Similar to Chloe's story, around age 8 or 9 we had to write poems on our favourite foods. Most of the kids of course did hot dogs or spaghetti. I think I was the only one who wrote about prime rib with wild rice.

[srhcb]

My first word was "bite".

SB (my Mom will swear to it)

[Zucchini Mama]

Well, I remember baking with my mom as a child, and then one day I heard her tell her friend that my meringues were better than hers! I can't remember how old I was, but I asked for octopus and chocolate cake on my birthday, and my sweet mom and dad picked up octopus and fulfilled my wish-never mind that the nearest fish store was 150 miles away. God, I love them.

Actually, like many young women, I had a real love-hate relationship with food as I was growing up as a teen and as a young adult. I thought it improper, unfeminine and greedy to focus my attention on food. It's been a long journey for me here to eGullet where I am pouring out all my years of repressed passion for food onto these pages.

My mom grew such lovely vegetable gardens, and I really took them for granted. All those huge sun-ripened tomatoes, fresh peas, and the first radishes of the season. My love for food has certainly come from my parents, who both have discerning palates, although they are humble country folks, and would never presume to say such a thing. I really treasure the meals I share with them, especially those cooked by my mom in her little house on the prairie with fresh organic produce from her garden, which is also chock full of flowers.

I guess what changed my life was meeting Peter, my partner, who grew up as a city boy in a sophisticated family that loved food and wine. Suddenly it made sense to me that food was something naturally beautiful and good, and enjoying food was an important part of a healthy and loving relationship to life and all its pleasures. And now we have a son who loves to join us for high tea and asks me politely if he can sample a few of the chocolate chips we're using to make cookies. One of these days, I'm sure he'll learn to appreciate octopus too!

Zuke

Edited June 8, 2005 by Zucchini Mama (log)

[Tough Cookie]

My mom claimed that I would only have butter with toast, never margarine. To this day, I cannot stand the taste of the offensive fake stuff.

[Pookie]

I prefered Julia Child to Sesame Street.

[Bond Girl]

I took over the cooking for the house at 14. Although the goal at that time was just to get food on the table.

[jennahan]

I can't say that my earliest memories are technically indicative that I would be a foodie, but it's really interesting that my earliest memories are all about eating food.

I remember being about 2 years old (no joke) and eating udon noodles at my grandmother's house. This is actually the earliest memory I have.

The second earliest memory I have is just about the same time...I was on a bus with my mother and nanny and the bus conductor gave me a piece of mint (I can't remember which kind) gum, which my mother let me eat. I swallowed it.

My next memory is when I was between 3-4 and eating my mother's bizzare pa-jun.

Perhaps it's telling that the things that struck me most to stick around is tasting and eating food.

[MaggieB]

When I was young, during the summer when school was out and we neighborhood kids were unsupervised, I would play restaurant with a friend of mine. One of us would sit at the dining room table and select items from the menu...the other would construct pretend representations of the menu items, sometimes using real food, sometimes not.

Interestingly enough, this particular friend has no memory of playing restaurant!

[TarteTatin]

My first solid food was Periwinkles in tomato sauce!

Raw clams, steamed clams and oysters, fried clams, at 7 years old.

TWO lobsters, eating every single little morsel out the whole lobsters.

I was about 8 years old. In Groton, Connecticut.

It was $7.95 for one, or $8.95 for two. (1968?)

My Dad said I could order two if I ate them both, and I did, no problem.

Spinach salads, I loved. It wasn't a "girl thing", worried about calories, I just loved them as a kid!

ANY vegetables! I always loved them all! (But not overcooked like my mother made them. She would put asparagus in the pressure cooker for 20 minutes)

Eating at restaurants on dates. Never understood my friends when they told me they didn't eat on dates as a late teenager. If the guy thought it was strange that I ate so much, well, no second date!... The nicer the restaurant my date took me to, the more likely it was we would kiss! No fast food for me, ever...

[Viola da gamba]

The fact that, almost without fail (lobster and asparagus being the notable exeptions), the thing that I liked the best was always (unbeknownst to me) the thing that was most expensive.

Yup - that's why my parents stopped taking me out to dinner until I reached an age (12) that they could explain why I couldn't have something without having to share details of family finances with the whole restaurant.

My first clue (apart from a liking for stinky cheese dating from birth, and the period from about 6 mos until about 9 mos when, according to my parents, I would only drink Tio Pepe and only eat 70% dark chocolate) was when, for a Consumer Ed. course where the assignment was to start a business, I chose to start baking bread - country loaves involving bran, wheat germ, etc., etc. - and insisted on grinding the wheat germ & flour by hand. Time consuming indeed.

[ratgirlny]

My sister and I always fought over the last Brussels sprouts in the pan.

Also, we would always complain when we went to dinner at other family's houses, and we were forced to eat the dumbed down kiddie food (or worse yet, McDonalds) while the adults were getting steak or some 60's style "gourmet" dish.

[lesfen]

I was blessed with a foodie grandmother for a babysitter. I remember sitting on her lap, eating sardines and dipping artichoke leaves into butter. Mmmm. Oyster stew and baguettes with butter for supper. She would give me pie dough scraps and we would spread them with butter, sprinkle with cinammon and sugar, roll up, slice and bake. Yum!

Damn. I need to call my grandma.

[jgarner53]

Not a born foodie, me, but probably early signs of my new career (pastry) showed up early on. For regular food, I was always quite picky, and happy lived on things like Spaghettios, frozen chicken pot pies, and McDonald's.

That said, I did take an interest in baking pretty early. I remember getting fed up with my EZ-Bake Oven pretty quickly because everything was so darned small! (And it didn't taste very good). I also remember having a toy fondue pot, where you dunked miniature marshmallows into various sauces (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry). I remember being consumed by chocolate cake and digging through my mom's cookbooks for recipes that used cocoa powder instead of squares of chocolate, either because I wasn't allowed to use the stove, or was afraid of something as ominously named as a "double boiler." I think that I also didn't like the fact that unsweetened chocolate looked like chocolate and smelled like chocolate, but you couldn't eat it!

I did, for a while, use canned frosting, mainly, I think, because I liked to snack on it (chocolate frosting spread on graham crackers? heaven), but eventually learned how to make the basic powdered sugar buttercream.

Angel food cakes? Not a problem for me. I loved making things that other people thought were difficult (still do). In college I became fascinated with bread and made all kinds of loaves. For a German class in college, I made a Schwarzwaldkirschtorte (Black Forest Cake), and wanting it to be authentic, I managed to procure some kirsch (though underage, and apparently unconcerned with the school's ban on alcohol) and put the whole thing together in the underequipped dorm kitchen.

My favorite part when my mom made a pie was the scraps she'd let me press into a 6-inch pie plate she had, then sprinkle butter and cinnamon sugar on before baking. That was our treat to eat while the pie baked.

When we had pancakes, she would give me a small cup of batter for myself, which I would color with food coloring (I think my favorite was green), and then pour out into shapes. Why eat round pancakes when you can have green snowmen, or bunny rabbits?

[viva]

My first word was "cheese".

Really.

[snowangel]

At age 8, our family moved from the Midwest to Thailand. My first night there, I had larb. Made with raw pork. I also had squid, and an exquisite chicken curry, the kind where they take the chicken and dice it up -- bones and all. Up 'til then, it had been a life of hot dishes (casseroles to some). Not since then!

[Susan G]

At 12 I started having cravings: This sliced ham, from that delicatessen, with this mustard and bread. I'd bicycle all morning to gather the ingredients (this was how I spent my allowance), and make a sandwich for lunch that made me sigh with happiness.

At 16 I began craving the more exotic: Blutwurst sandwiches, kreplach, matzoh ball soup, sushi. (I'm a WASP). Again, it was my own allowance and babysitting monies that paid for these excursions.

[daniellewiley]

Here are my daughter's clues. She's only 3.5, so I'll type them for her to record them for posterity.

1. At the Indian buffet, she had 3 servings of goat curry.

2. Last night at a Chinese buffet (she likes buffets), her favorite thing was the octopus. "This is deLICIOUS!"

[tejon]

My six year old planned dinner tonight, including dessert. He wanted a white cake with a vanilla glaze, almonds and blackberries on top. Not satisfied with that description, he drew a picture of exactly how the finished cake should look and where everything should go. The finished cake, decorated to his specifications:

[Genny]

Wow, I'm really impressed with everyone's early genius showing. I can't say that I had super early childhood successes at cooking or eating exotic foods.

Many of my memories are of food though. Some of my fondest are food related...does that count? Like stuffing my face with as many puffed cheetos to mimic my hamster at age 8 (really, my mom has a picture). Hmmm, I did take every opportunity to pilfer fresh grown produce like: the neighbor's apricots from her tree every summer, sitting in the cherry tree eating as many as I could (it was a cherry grove actually, my brother took salt pellets in the ass from the farmer once for the same offence!), riding my big wheel 2 doors down and picking a fresh cherry tomato from "Aunt" Rose's plant every time I went up her driveway (I knew this would get me yelled at!), and when my parents started gardening I would go pick the early peas and eat them right there, pull up the radishes and slice them super thin and float them in my Campbell's cream of mushroom soup with lots of black pepper. Nothing is better than fresh fruit still warm from the sun, picked and eaten on the spot!

I can remember when I was about 13 my Dad bought a cookbook for me. I was so offended. I had been responsible for about 1/2 of the cooking at home because my mother worked nights. I thought I was doing OK and then he gave me that damn book! Hm. I started looking through it and I think the first thing I made out of it was an Easter Anise Loaf. I was so proud, it turned out beautifully. It is a sweet bread flavored with anise and has dyed hard boiled eggs baked right into the top of the loaf. The picture was so pretty and it had 'Easter' in the name of it. It was my contribution to the Easter dinner at my grandmother's house. My Dad did show me how to knead the bread to the right consistancy, that was the only help I got. When we brought it into my grandmother's house she asked, "Well, well, what do we have here?" and my Mom told her I made it all by myself. When my grandmother asked what it was, I proudly (and loudly) replied, "I made you an Easter Anus Loaf!"

Well, as they say: "Pobodys Nerfect!"

[annanstee]

I stole the "I love chocolate chip cookies" cook book form the book bus at around seven and systematically made every recipe in the book. (Shhh, I still have it).