Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Memories of Meals Past

Haverchuk tagged me to recall some childhood food memories. I'm not a food blogger, and I'm not even a foodie, so I'm not even going to try to do any fancy food writing. And, as a woman, I've often been frustrated by the frequent attempts of the MSM to complicate my relationship with food. Treat yourself! Starve yourself! Treat yourself! Starve yourself! I've been aware of this for almost as long as I've been aware of anything. And since coverage of America's "obesity epidemic" almost eclipses that of Bradgelina and TomKat, I can only imagine that it's gotten worse for children. Not to mention that -- in most families -- there's at least one person who loves to talk about how fat/thin/big/petite/husky/buxom everyone else in the family is. And that usually leads to endlessly tedious discussions of what everyone's eating. Usually about 15 minutes into any family event I want to tell at least one person to shut the fuck up about bodies and/or how much or how little food everyone is eating. I'd rather talk about TomKat.

That said, I really do love good food and coffee and wine. As a child, I was fed plenty of delicious Italian foods like cannolis and spaghetti and lasagna; I was taken strawberry and blueberry and apple picking. We had a garden in the back yard. All the la-de-da so happy-golden childhood stuff.

So, because our culture is so messed up about food, my five childhood memories are a mix of the good and the bad.

1.) A bizarre psa-type commercial that used to air between cartoons reminding kiddies "don't drown your food." To this day, mayonnaise gives me the creeps.

2.) Being told by a probably well-meaning relative and sometimes even a stranger that I shouldn't take so many mashed potatoes / rolls / pieces of pie.

3.) That egg in the "this is your brain on drugs" commercial.

4.) My dad used to make homemade soft pretzels. They made the house smell all warm-yummy and were really really good. And my mom used to make blueberry pie after we went berry picking.

5.) At an ill-fated sleepover, my friend J and I attempted to make a chocolate cake "from scratch" without a recipe (I have sort of a history of doing this. I just can't shake the feeling that recipes make cooking so much more laborious and un-fun). Anyway, we basically dumped a canister of cocoa into a bowl, added some water and eggs and sugar and flour, stirred it all up, and tried to bake it. I'm not sure why it didn't really "cook." It basically oozed all over the oven, which meant we had to sort of shovel out the lumpy, steamy, brown batter with spatulas. You can probably imagine of what said concoction reminded us. To this day we giggle about "the baby-doo" cake. I know. So mature. We should've stuck to our easy bake ovens.


2 comments:

porkmuffin said...

imagine for a moment the exponential increase in food/fat comments when you are a chubby/fat child. hell. almost every memory associated with food and childhood has a dark underbelly. forgive the pun.

porkmuffin said...

indeed, you are not so clever with the PS/PS reference. on the other hand, getting together soon is so clever that you shall win an honorary grammy. (please prepare a speech...)