I believe almost every desire or behavior around food has something to do with…
memory,
mouth feel,
or mindset.
When I began to explore those three facets of my own food life I began to see a subtle shift in my relationship to food. I stopped making food a villain and I began to soften my approach to nourishment. There were no longer good foods or bad foods. I no longer “fell off the wagon” when I wasn’t eating perfectly. My food repertoire expanded. And with that expansion came the absence of craving. One day I noticed that it had been a very long time since I noticed a “craving.” I believe I stopped CRAVING foods when I gave myself permission to follow my intuition and simply eat foods that nourished me. At every level.
Memory.
Most of my food memories involve my grandmother’s kitchen or weekend shopping excursions with my dad, from butcher to bakery to market to table. For me, LOVE WHAT YOU EAT is far more than a tagline. It’s a way of life.
I believe there is much to gain from retrieving our memories and capturing them in print. Will you join me?
I Remember
by Sue Ann Gleason
I remember the corner candy store on 10th street, the West Side of Buffalo, where “the Italians” resided. And the little boys in the neighborhood chasing the girls with scary-looking chicken feet from Louie the butcher. I remember the smell of garlic sautéing in a pan and the red formica table with the rippled chrome edge waiting for whatever my grandmother was preparing for dinner that evening.
I remember grandma’s hands. And cucumber slices falling from a great big cutting board that bore the faint aroma of garlic cloves slivered and onions chopped.
I remember going to the Columbia Market with my father and seeing little snails crawling up and over the side of a great big barrel and making the connection, for the first time ever, that the little shells in grandma’s sauce, the ones that held the tiny morsel the adults pulled out with a hat pin and ate, were one and the same and being so grateful I just ate macaroni and butter.
I remember the smell of the Columbia Market. Cheese. Good cheese. Cheese that came in big rounds hanging from the ceiling on ropes. Cheese that smelled like cheese.
I remember olives. Big bowls of olives, green and black and crinkled. I remember the man behind the counter. He knew my dad. Everyone knew my dad. My dad liked to stick around and talk.
There was never any rush with my dad. Never, “I have to get home, we need to hurry.” We sauntered in the aroma of that market. Me with big blue eyes of wonder looking at all those shapes and colors. He wanting me to drink in every sight and sound and scent so he could live it through my eyes, too.
I remember donuts. Well of course I remember donuts. Jets Donuts. You don’t grow up in Buffalo, New York and not remember donuts. Big, gooey, cream-filled éclairs with thick chocolate frosting. I didn’t much care for the creamy white filling but oh how I loved to lick the chocolate frosting off the top and chew the doughy goodness around that cream.
I remember the first time I tried an éclair with “yellow” cream. Custard cream. I liked that so much better. Boston Cream Pie became my favorite birthday cake because I got the best of both worlds, the yummy chocolate frosting and the golden yellow cream. Custard cream. Yes, I remember falling into the donut hole at a very early age. No wonder I smile each time I enjoy chocolate for breakfast.
How about YOU? Do you have a food memory you’d like to share? Leave a comment below and we’ll reminisce together.
13 thoughts on “I Am My Father’s Daughter”
I remember going fishing for mackerel before sunrise with my father, coming home, him cleaning and frying them for breakfast. I remember when he took us in the car for a surprise and it was to the first Dairy Queen for the ” cone with the curl on top” – and it cost a nickel! I remember falling on a sharp counter in the five and dime. He picked me up, walked across to the doctor’s who stitched me up…and then we went to the drug store for an ice cream sundae. No wonder fish and ice cream remain two of my favorite foods!
I love these memories, Jane! I remember the first time I ever tasted fish fresh from a mountain stream. I was camping in the Rockies with my Uncle Sam and he caught Rainbow Trout and cooked it in a great big cast iron skillet over an open fire. I don’t know that I will ever again taste a piece of fish that good. I remember that cone with the curl on top, too. Frozen custard. That was such a treat. And the “five and dime.” What beautiful memories that phrase evokes. Thank you for sharing these memories with me.
Oh Sue Ann! How I want to crawl into your memories as a little girl and join you and your father as you traverse these places from Grandmother’s kitchen to cheese stores, to little boys chasing girls to licking the chocolate off donuts. RICH! how absolutely RICH. My relationship to food WOULD be different. No. Doubt.
I think/feel back to my own memories. It wasn’t my grandmother’s kitchen. But my mother’s. I took it for granted… the constant aromas wafting from that teeny tiny room which fed numberless people! In my imagination? THOUSANDS! Freshly baked scones with homemade apple butter, fried Finnish flatbread covered with raspberry preserves, freshly picked blueberry pancakes doused with maple syrup. Just a few of the breakfast foods we would clamor for.
Even I who rarely stopped to eat was drawn into that room to punch dough and lick spoon as the scent of the cinnamon rolls, prize winning chocolate chip cookies, baked Alaskan pie. We were the ones doing the growing and picking for any of the berry pies she made, . Strawberries, blueberries, blackberries. When we travelled to B.C., the heart of ‘Peach Country’, she and dad would be picking peaches, cherries, nectarines while we played and swam at the lake. As soon as we arrived home she would immediately turn those crates into preserves, jams, and piiiiiiesssss!
And then there was the garden. It’s amazing how far north Edmonton is with its extremely short summers, yet how prolific those gardens are. The summer was allllllll about the garden. Plowing, seeding, growing, weeding… then finally the harvest… and THEN the canning, or freezing. The work never ceased! But neither did the food. I was a child. I ran in and out of that garden, stained my clothes and mouth stuffing it with berries! Pulled and crunched raw carrots, green beans, corn and peas… ooooooo i LOVED their hidden treasures!
But I did not love the endless rounds of work! Nor what seemed like her chained reality to a house and people who verbally abused her. No. Way. By the time I was a teenager, I stopped eating. Not to be thin. But to rage against the abuse. To rage against all the raging I ingested as a child.
The gift of my work with you Sue Ann, is to now be able to reach through the layer of dysfunction to this exquisite ground from which I was grown. To those memories that have begun to unearth themselves as jewels. Find my roots. Return to that original force of love. Be nourished. And step into a whole new relationship and love for nourishing myself exquisitely.
Thank you for this opportunity to write me story. The beginnings of a new one.
Love you so much!
This piece touched me deeply, Kathleen Prophet, “Freshly baked scones with homemade apple butter, fried Finnish flatbread covered with raspberry preserves, freshly picked blueberry pancakes doused with maple syrup. Just a few of the breakfast foods we would clamor for.” It is so interesting to me that we (the collective we) take these sights and scents for granted and that, when reawakened, food can be, as Jenny Rosenstrach so beautifully describes in the title of her book, A Love Story. Thank you for sharing with us this exquisite piece of writing. And for gifting me with your heartfelt presence.
I remember my Grandma Hale’s good, old-fashioned farm cooking. Best fried chicken ever, anywhere. Mostly I think we’re both lucky to have such fond memories of our fathers. When I was little I believed mine could fix anything, and that as long as he was around nothing bad could happen–and I think every child should have that period of blind trust. And I feel blessed that as I grew out of that child filter and began to see and know my Dad as a whole, imperfect person, I found that I liked and respected him for just who he is.
My happiest food memories come from my grandmother, Katherine. She loved to cook and entertain and from a simple lunch of tuna salad sandwiches to a grand holiday dinner were nothing short of a culinary celebration. She did make the best tuna salad I’ve ever eaten. Even though I follow her recipe hers was always a cut above. Her deviled eggs, potato salad, and fried chicken were perfection. She made tiny little half dollar biscuits with her homemade apple cinnamon jelly. Oh, and her meatloaf to ground beef to a whole other level. Sue Ann, anytime you talk about your childhood, I’m in heaven. You take me right back there with you.
I had so much fun reading this, Sue Ann! You write so beautifully! I could almost see, taste, and smell the things you were describing.
So glad you’re in Raining Umbrellas. I know you’ll bring a lot to “the table”. ha, ha.
Thank you for visiting my blog, Vicki. I look forward to exploring my blog in the context of “Raining Umbrellas.”
Thank you for taking us on a delicious and delightful trip through your life Sue! I love the way you translate your memories into words: my imagination starts to work immediately when I read this blog post and I can almost smell and savour all this food you mention. That’s a real talent and I am happy you share it with us. It’s remarkable that scents and tastes can bring back so many images of former life stages: I am fascinated by this fact and that’s another reason why food is so important to me. Looking forward to sharing the Raining Umbrellas journey with you!
I enjoyed all the beautiful food photos on your blog as well, Cococita. I believe we have the same foodie sensibility! Thank you for visiting my blog.
I remember these cookies my husband made, they are triple chocolate and he made them when my father was in hospital. My father wasn’t well after drinking for too long and we brought the cookies in thinking that visitors/nurses would probably end up eating them since he wasn’t feeling hunger.
We were wrong, he ate them and loved them. It was the last time I ever spoke to my father and we still eat those cookies to this day.
Sue Ann,
I am having a lovely stroll through your blog! I had to pause here and say that this story wrapped me up in wonder and memory. I love the luscious details — the big rounds of cheese hanging from the ceiling on ropes, the the cucumber slices falling from a great big cutting board…
Gorgeous! I know and I *feel* your deep love for food through every piece of this.
And, the “I remember” format works wonderfully, to create a dreamy, layered memory-world.
Thanks for sharing! I look forward to reading more.
Warmly,
Chris
(from Firefly Creative Writing)
So glad you stopped by, Chris! Thank you for taking a walk down memory lane with me.