Think about your earliest food memory...
Or it might be your first memory of food. Maybe your memory about food intersects with a life event or involves others who are (or are no longer) in your life.
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Whatever moment it is, whether it is a distant or close memory, think about the memory that you have about food that stays within your bones.
Food Always Gives.
Food Always Takes.
Addison
Food always gives.
It gives time to be together, time to be alone, time to experiment. Time to enjoy the smell, the taste, the laughter, the smiles, open eyed, closed eyes, the sense of being alive.
Food always takes.
It takes time, energy, courage, adventure, resources…from the earth, the sun, the air, the mind, the wallet, and the heart. Every distinction that defines life, food exists to support, represent, embody, and ignite it.
I cook a lot, and from that I’ve learned that I’ve learned more things I make are amazing and what isn’t is…well, let’s say only I know.
When I think of a top-tier food experience, I think of our wedding. The tastings leading up to the big day until we found it. The best butternut squash ravioli with maple cream sauce that I could happily eat every day of my life. Then, I think of the lobster mac + cheese, my two favorite flavors combined. It reminds me of when we picked up the same thing from the same restaurant in early COVID days when food was just about the only thing we had to look forward to.
And now here we were at our wedding, eating it again and promising each other a lifetime more of the best meals.
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Josie
When I left for college, I didn’t know how to cook. Not even how to bake a potato. My mother created a binder of all the recipes that she used with the family and gave it to me. Under the tab “vegetables” she included how to bake a potato: Wash and prick with fork and cook in 400° oven for an hour. For years afterwards, when I wanted to bake a potato, I had to open up her cookbook. I couldn’t remember- was it prick and wash or wash and prick.
Carol
"I think I'll stick to candy."
Anonymous
My friends are good at cooking, and during COVID, we would all make something for our cookout. I would make Jello Desserts, since I don’t cook or bake. I made Jello eyeballs with a blueberry pupil for Halloween, all pink dye, chocolate brains with jelly filling. They were yummy but grossed out one of my friends too much with how realistic they looked. I tried making caramel at 3 a.m. in the morning! I looked away and the sugar started to burn. The smoke alarm went off waking up my parents. Thanks ADHD for making cooking and baking a bit more challenging because I get easily distracted and following directions is difficult. But I keep trying. I think I’ll stick to candy.
I feel indelibly tied to soymilk
It’s silky texture was hell to elementary school me, and its slight sweetness turned tang nauseated me as I tried to chug the last few gulps on the bus ride home. I don’t drink it anymore - almond milk is my non-dairy drink of choice - but I don’t think there will be a time when I can forget it. I’m allergic to milk, and grew up right at the turn of food alternatives. I escaped the clouded water that is rice milk, but soy, being high in protein and fortified with calcium, was my beverage twice a day. Straight out of the bridge it wasn’t bad, but that wasn’t the problem.
My mother sent me to school with a thermo of soymilk to drink at lunch. I can appreciate now the lengths she went to minimize the unpleasantness, but to the pink stainless steel thermos all banged up from a fourth grader’s abuse and the fact that a reusable straw can never truly be cleaned of the soymilk smell just felt like daily punishment for having a body that reacts to milk proteins. And how I longed for those pink strawberry milk cartons in the lunch line! Instead, I was forced to stare into the thermos of soymilk, drips running down the side and caking onto the metal in the recess sun. I even had “milk races” with my best friend to see who could drink their milk fastest. I think it was orchestrated by my mom. I lost every time, and eventually that friend too.
Of course, it would have been easier and much more pleasant to just drink the milk, but the overpowering odor that bloomed in my face every time I opened the thermo of lukewarm soymilk overrode all reason and remains to haunt me to this day.
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Chloe
We Went All Out
By Anonymous
During the pandemic we weren’t allowed to have Thanksgiving together and had to eat by ourselves. We recreated our favorite family dishes for ourselves and made a full Thanksgiving meal as if we were hosting our families for the first time. We went all out. We both had to learn or relearn family favorites and it pushed us harder than we had been pushed before and we grew like crazy as cooks.
I also think it helped us feel as if things weren’t as bad as they were and like we were all together. It was also very validating to make my parents’ and grandparents’ dishes and have it taste similar.
It Was A Game Changer...
My grandmother was one of the best cooks I’ve ever met. She could make anything and it would be amazing. Even things she’d never made before. She used to make the best chocolate chip cookies. I always tried to replicate how hers came out but could never make it right. Mine were always flat (still tasty, but not the same). Hers were plump + delicious + cooked to perfection.
Anonymous
I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire,
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on a dead-end street with a yard that was just big enough for a modest swing set and a vegetable garden. Some of my earliest outdoor memories are of my dad turning the soil with a shovel in preparation for planting tomatoes, green peppers, and beans. At some point early in our family’s gardening life, my mom took over, and our little salad garden was replaced by arrangements with a couple of neighbors, which allowed us to plant additional gardens on their much larger properties. Suddenly, everything was happening at scale.
My mother canned, froze, and dried massive quantities of fruit, vegetables, sauces, jams, and jellies. We had a root cellar lined with jars of applesauce and tomato sauce, two large chest freezers in our barn jam-packed with frozen corn, green beans, and Swiss chard. Our pantry shelves bent under the weight of gallon-size jars of dried apples, plums, and other fruit and nuts.
My mother made her own yogurt, baked her own bread, and sprouted her own sprouts.
The incredible irony, which it has taken my siblings and me decades to admit to ourselves and each other, is my mother was… dare I say it? A pretty mediocre cook. In fact, it turns out, she’d always disliked cooking. Laying up massive stores was one thing. Making a mac and cheese was… just tedious.
My mother married young and was a “stay at home mom,” which she called being a “homemaker.” She loved that life and her role in it, truly. I don’t doubt that for a minute. But when I think back on how that tiny backyard garden made her restless, and how much earth it took to bring gardening to a scale that felt challenging to her, worthy of her energy, talents, and vision, it makes me wonder.
That’s all. I just wonder…
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Krista