Many of my most vivid memories relate to food. I loved all the family gatherings when I was a kid. With six brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins all living in a relatively small area, we seemed to get together every week. If the occasion was not for a complete meal, then there had to be “lunch” served with coffee and a variety of scrumptious sweets. I dearly loved sitting quietly nearby so I could hear everyone talk and tell their stories.
To this day, I can’t see or smell cinnamon rolls without thinking of Mom and all her delicious baked goods. Grandma always kept a clear glass container like a huge brandy snifter in the center of her table, filled to the brim with several kinds of homemade cookies. Whenever she felt we didn’t eat the cookies quickly enough, she topped all of them with chocolate icing, one of my personal favorites.
Connected with those fabulous food memories are the memorable family stories that were told and retold. I never tired of hearing favorite stories from bygone days.
Food is one great way for YOU to open up a treasure chest of memories.
1. Get the stories behind the food
What do you think of when asked about your favorite food? Is it something that your grandmother made, like apple crisp? Or is it your Uncle Pete’s awesome barbecued ribs? Or how about your neighbor’s chocolate fudge? Or is it something you make yourself, like a peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwich? One of my own family favorites is fresh lemon meringue pie, which Mom made better than anyone else.
Whatever it is, everyone has favorite foods. Many of these foods make us think of when we were younger. But did you ever wonder about the stories behind the food? Who came up with the original recipe for apple crisp? And who on earth decided to add raisins or nuts to it? You can get some wonderful stories when you pose questions like these to cooks you know.
2. Use the power of food to recall memories
Food can be a powerful trigger to help you recall memories. If someone mentions pumpkin pie, do you think of Thanksgiving dinner? Do gingerbread cookies remind you of Christmas? Do hard-boiled eggs lead to thoughts of Easter? Whenever I see pecan pie, I always think about shelling pecans by the bushel (it sure seemed like a bushel, anyway) so we’d have pecans all winter.
You can use food to remind your family circle of stories you want to hear. One idea is to throw a cookie baking party. Everyone has fun, you get to make cookies (or pizza, or pretzels, or whatever you like best) and you dig up stories from the past. Best of all, you get to enjoy your favorite foods and favorite people at the same time.
Whenever people get together, they like to talk and tell stories. You can make up a list of questions to ask for more background about your own memories. Just remember to either write down what people say or use a recorder to capture it. That’s a whole lot easier than trying to remember all the details later.
3. Use family gatherings for more story-telling
Any gathering of your friends and family is a great chance to capture more stories. Many times, this is a fun opportunity for group discussions. Getting people to talk about their favorite foods will always lead to good memories. Ask about the first time Aunt Alice made a favorite recipe like macaroni and cheese and burned it. Where did she learn how to fix it? Some families may have their own idea of what a dish should be like. For example, one family may like macaroni and cheese from the blue box, but another family might be disappointed if they didn’t get it homemade from scratch with three kinds of cheese. They’re all keys to opening up those memories.
4. Combine family stories and recipes
One way to capture family stories and recipes is to make a little cookbook of your favorite foods. Then you can add stories to go along with the recipes. It’s even more fun to show the original recipe and who made it. Then show any changes that other people made to it.
To get stories from your family circle, you can ask each of them to write down their favorite recipe onto a card. Make sure they include the directions as well. On the other side of the recipe card, ask them to write a few notes about where the original recipe came from. They might also like to give you a photo of the food or the original cook.
Every year we lose someone special from our circle of friends and family. Please keep this in mind: Get started now to save their precious memories before they are lost forever.
Beth- This is so wonderful! Immediately takes me back to weekly sunday gatherings at my grandmother’s teeny railroad apartment where her 4 daughters and 8 grandchildren would assemble. The foods were always the same and there were Hershey bars on the refrigerator door for the kids to take. As people gathered my “bubbe” would take out rye bread, cloves of garlic and olive oil and we would rub the oil and garlic on the bread and eat it. A middle eastern treat from her childhood I think! mmmm.
Pearl,
Thanks for the comment. One of the little pleasures I get in life is to catch a taste or the whiff of a scent that reminds me of someone or something special. For example, at the grocery store yesterday, the elderly gentleman standing next to me had apparently just finished smoking a pipe that had the same tobacco my Dad smoked years ago.
Yes, I know smoking is frowned upon, but that aroma was a pleasant reminder of my dear old Dad. In fact, I use the power of the five senses in many of my writing workshops to help people recall memories. Your rye bread with garlic and olive oil sounds like a lovely touchstone for you as well. I hope you share that memory (and the tasty treat, of course!) with your own family now. Enjoy it!
Beth – Most of our family food stories are dreadful, along the lines of the day salt got substituted for the white sugar in some chocolate chip cookies or the real reason we at macaroni and cheese on Christmas Eve (so much for tradition!). But you’ve got me thinking. My grandkids need some late-night beignets! Deadly for the diet, but what a wonderful memory of my early years as a mom.
Patty,
I LOVE the idea of starting (or resurrecting) food traditions with our kids and grandkids! That will help build pleasant (or, in your case from earlier years, less pleasant but amusing) memories for years to come. I remember my Mom making fresh donuts at home, so the thought of yummy beignets makes my mouth water. I’d ask you to send me some, but they probably wouldn’t be as wonderful days later in a soggy envelope. lol
Beignets, best served while still warm, have a shelf life (serving platter life?) of about 4 hours. After that, you can use them for hockey pucks.
Ha! In that case, I will definitely not ask you to send any. Enjoy making them and making some meories for your grandkids. I’m sure everyone will have fun with it.
My favorite food memory is our families famous “nut bread.” It is nothing like bread, it’s more like a biscotti. A mistake in an ancestors kitchen ended up changing the recipe forever more.
I love, love, love that nut bread. I love how it smells, how it gets better the more you eat (the can be problematic). Even the dough makes me remember helping make it in my aunties kitchen as a little girl.
The first time I made the nut bread in my own kitchen was after my mother had past. I had to call my aunt for the recipe. Along with how much flour to measure out she told the story of the recipes lore just as my mother had told it to me so many times before.
When I make it now, the memories of my mother fill the sweet, warmed air in the kitchen.
I love biscotti-type breads, too. I always wondered if they came about when someone accidentally left them too long in the oven, then decided they were pretty good after all. Whatever the reason, it’s lovely to have all the variety and at the same time have all the wonderful memories to enjoy and share.
This is a good one – remember the cookies? Mom made the best chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies. Not to mention the spritz butter cookies. Oh how I do miss them. Guess that’s the best part of remembering. I really think that some of that cooking ability was passed along, because, when we get together at Joannies – we all enjoy not only the sharing of memories but, the good food that is brought and shared. It’s always fun getting together with family. Love ya
Oh, yeah, I always loved the cookies! In fact, I don’t think I ever met a cookie I didn’t like. lol You are absolutely right that family gatherings plus good food make for a wonderful experience.
Love this post! I never really gave much credit to all those smells and what they end up reminding me of, even now! Thank you for drawing this out and making me more aware of this natural blessing I could be giving my kids!
Susan,
I’m glad you see the benefits of considering aromas, which can be such evocative reminders of things we have experienced. In fact, all five of the senses can do the same thing, which is always fun to explore with friends, family or a writing workshop.