Foods that stir up memories

[cow pollinater]

I was reading the "best fish" topic on the sports forum and I was starting to get mad remembering all the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I used to eat...
When I got married I was working ten to twelve hours a day seven days a week and trying to build a farm on the side. My young wife quit her job(at my insistance) when we found out we had a honeymoon baby on the way. My wife has always been a great cook but it's been a fairly recent revalation for her to see my labor as providing for her as well as myself and respond in kind.
I can vividly remember days where I'd gone for months without a day off and just begging her to make me something to eat and her telling me that I was a grown man and needed to take responsibility for my own hunger. Her way of giving in was to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and they always came with a lecture about how I was a grownup and should cook for myself but she'd do it this time... Nevermind that whole part about her sitting at home all day while I was paying her way. :bang:
I ate at least one peanut butter and jelly sandwich a day for about five years. I still like them... But I can't eat them without feeling like I'm getting the shaft and wondering why I kill myself off for her. Even if I make one for myself I look at my wife and shake my head and think to myself, "you selfish *****" and she's NOT that person anymore.
What are your food inspired memories? Are there things that you can't stand because of the places they take your mind to? Is there stuff you eat till it hurts because of the memories it brings up?

 

[dun]

Home made split pea soup and home made bread. once a week on baking day that's what we had. To this day it reminds me what a horrible cook my mother was.

 

[Anonymous]

Sounds like you got issues cp. I never would have let it go that long without laying down some ground rules :shock:

Back on subject, churros always remind me of the state fair where I met my wife some 22 years ago.
The smell of a camel cig or a lit match reminds me of the nights I spent on a lounge chair that I called home when I got kicked out of my parents house.

 

[cow pollinater]

Sounds like you got issues cp. I never would have let it go that long without laying down some ground rules :shock: .

Nope. I tried but I later found out that I wasn't dealing with a healthy person to begin with. Therapy and time gave me a new wife that sees things my way and it turns out that's her way as well. :lol:
That's the point of the thread... PBJ takes me back to the way it used to be and it ain't a happy place.

 

[VanC]

Ate a lot of grilled cheese and tomato soup growing up. Still like it. Also had a lot of salmon loaf which now makes me sick to think about. Both remind me of my youth.

Best food memory is breakfast on the farm. Get up at 5, do the milking and other chores and get back in about 7 or 7:30. By that time you were famished and my aunt always had a huge country breakfast waiting. Yummy.

 

[slick4591]

This is totally un-Southern of me, but that would be pinto beans for me. When I was a kid I would spend summers with my grandparents. They were far from wealthy and at every lunch and dinner there were pinto beans. I would smell them cooking every morning when I woke and my breakfast eggs tasted like them because of the smell. They were there at lunch and the leftover ones were for supper. Every day rinse and repeat until school started again and I went home. Mother didn't cook them very often, but I finally got to the point where I refused to eat them.

In '03 I got into the BBQ restaurant/catering gig and that's when the pinto beans came back to haunt me. I had to make the cotton pickin' things by the gallons at least three times a week. After playing with the recipe that was in place I finally developed my own recipe, which I based on my wife being the official bean taster. Truly, it would not bother me if I never ever saw another pinto bean again.

 

[Dave]

Growing up (along with all the salmon I ate) Mom made egg salad sandwiches for my school lunch all the time. Not bad egg salad just way too often. I would trade them off, give them away, or just toss them. Years later after Mom's funeral the ladies at church had put out some food for the reception. Included were egg salad sandwiches. In front of Mom's sisters I picked up a little egg salad sandwich and said, "in honor of Mom I am going to do to this sandwich what I did to hundreds of them growing up". I then walked over the the trash can and threw it away. I still don't eat egg salad if I can help it. But everytime I see one I think of my Mom.

 

[Isomade]

No doubt, it's BBQ glaze pork chops, pan fried taters, and Mac and cheese! When my oldest was born she weighed 2lbs, we werent well off to begin with but, going thru that took every extra dime we had. Our one weekly ritual was to make sure at least one night per week we saved our money and we had something to eat we enjoyed. That was it! I could still eat it every day.

 

[Ouachita]

Thanks CP This does bring back several memories. I never thought about it much until your post. So........

On chicken- I worked for a neighbor from about age 9 until I was 15. We got all the free chickens and eggs we wanted. I still want to hurl when I see either.
On "hamburger helper"- My first wife did not know how to cook, so her staple was hamburger helper. When we first married, I liked it. After 5 years it sucked. My second, and last, wife is a very good cook and does most everything from scratch. She knew my displeasure with this particular box food, but about 2 years in to our marraige she cooked some. It brought back memories that she won't forget :bang: :lol2:
On fried fish- When I spent time at my grandparents place, granny would insist we go catch breakfast. My brothers and I would happily go fishing for our breakfast, and she cooked it on the wood cook stove. I remeber that everytime I eat fried fish. Good memories
On coon- I've never had good coon since my granny cooked it at Christmas. Seriously, she knew how to make everything taste good. Everytime I think about it, I remember waking up freezing cold in that house with the stove glowing cherry red.
On duck- I remember the first time my dad took me duck hunting. It was fun. When we dressed the duck, the smell was overwhelming. I don't eat duck.
On turkey- Could be the only fowl I eat except pheasant and grouse. Good memories of grouse in CO. We were bow hunting and had ran out of food. Shot a grouse and it was the best meal I ever had.

 

[Double E]

I had a discussion today about what tastes as good as leftovers as it did when first cooked. I threw out pinto beans as tasting better the second day and everybody agreed. That is my memory, beans and cornbread. The second, third or more.

 

[Jogeephus]

Grilled chicken reminds me of the hard times I had starting out in north Alabama. Flat broke but each Friday I'd splurge and buy some chicken and cook it on the grill. Best chicken I ever ate.

Sausage, bacon, eggs, grits, toast and homemade jelly reminds me of the good times at my grandmother's house. She had no central heat and air and very little electricity and the house was as cold as an ice box but about 5:00 a.m you would smell the breakfast cooking and you had to get out of that warm bed and run on the cold floor to the kitchen where you'd be greeted by the warmth of a pot belly stove and that fantastic cooking. Lunch was better than Shoney's buffet then supper was cornbread and milk. Good times these were.

Bad times are remembered when I see a can of cream of mushroom soup. This was the backbone of my X's cooking skill. Dump a can of that in a dish and add some chicken breasts and bake it until its just shy of burning and call it edible. I hate to see a can of that goop even today.

 

[3waycross]

For me it's Elk and Macaroni and cheese. When we were first married we were ok financially but with two babies in 12 1/2 months and one income for 3 years things got pretty slim. The good news was I killed a lot of Elk in those days and some Antelope too. Anyway we ate Elk and Mac and cheese at least 3 times a week especially in the winter when there was no garden.
To this day if my wife makes that combo I run to the computer and check my bank balance to see if i am broke again. What's funny is to this day my grown kids still think it's a treat! They all eat a lot of game!

 

[wv mud river]

when i was in elementary school.i could smell the lunch cooking in the cafeteria they would bake homemade bread, large rolls called alabama biscuits.man, did they taste good. everytime i smell bread baking i think of ele. school

 

[MO_cows]

For my husband it is oatmeal. They had a houseful of kids and not much money when he was growing up. His mom worked the breakfast shift waiting tables. But never let it be said she didn't fix breakfast for her kids, even though they weren't going to be awake for a looooong time after she left for work so early in the morning. She made them a pot of oatmeal and left it on low on the stove. He says by the time they got up it was so thick the spoon would stand up straight in the middle of it. To this day he doesn't like oatmeal.

When I was a kid I had a wicked stepmother. She was a lousy cook and had lousy taste in food besides. She had a fondness for canned zuchinni in tomato sauce. It was slimy and nasty especially after it was heated up on the stove for way too long, but she made me eat it. Sometimes I literally left the table and puked. Still hate her, still hate canned zuchinni. Fresh zuchinni, fried or grilled, bring it on I love it. But that mushy stuff in the can, ewwwww.

 

[greybeard]

Corned beef. Every single day that I ate in the Marble Mountain Air Facility chowhall, they had corned beef. . We called it red death. The worst c-rat was better by far. I ate my last slice on red death on May 31, 1971 then flew over to Danang the next morning and got on the big bird to come home. All I gotta do is look at corned beef or smell it and the bad ol days come right back to mind.

On the good side, it's gotta be sausage patty sandwiches. I raised a hog for my first year FFA, and when it was ready, my dad asked how I wanted it processed. I loved fried sausage so said "All sausage". (he wouldn't go for that, but it made more sausage than usual) and I had sausage patty sandwiches every day for lunch the whole next school year--from sausage left over from breakfast. Dang the cholesterol--gimme my sausage! (Early on, I almost killed that hog by accident and ignorance, but that's a story for another time)

 

[Ryder]

First year in college I had a meal ticket for three meals a day in the cafeteria. But at night I would get really hungry.
Every night some of the boys in the dormitory would go to the bus station restaurant where they had red beans and rice I think for a dollar. That price was a little high for me so I didn't go.
I learned that a cigarette with a coke or coffee was cheaper and would help suppress the hunger.
Years later when I quit smoking I started gaining weight and tried to cut down on my eating. I started having literal visions in my mind and dreams about red beans and rice. I don't even particularly like red beans and rice.

There was a preacher in school who was about the age of my father. His oldest daughter was the same age as me.
Anyway, he had been a navy seabee in WWII. After the war he and his brother went into the contracting business and were doing well. But then he felt the call to preach. So he went back to college and was also pastoring a small country church.
He married me and my wife and we lost contact for years. Then something kept telling me to get in touch with him. I did and we started visiting him and his wife regularly. One night we were talking and he mentioned that someway they always had something for supper for the kids.
I said do you mean that the two of you didn't have enough for yourselves at night and they said, no.
When we were in school I had no idea it was that hard for them. Made me think that I really didn't have it that bad. I benefitted a lot from knowing him.
He and his wife both were really fine people.

 

[CowboyBlue]

When my mom was growing up back in the '30's, my grandfather PaPa always had hogs, and Granny always had a (HUGE) garden. PaPa's philosophy was, "We may not have anything to wear and the roof may leak, but we ain't gonna go hungry." And Mama tells me they never did!

Anyway, they had lots of taters. One of my favorite dishes is fresh fried taters sprinkled with corn meal, mixed in with slices of German sausage. Larrupin' good! Any time I cook that up I remember Granny's house.

On the flip side of the tater issue -- One of Granny's remedies for an upset tummy was potato soup. So my Mama carried that over into her parenting arsenal of skills, knowledge and experience. However, when I was just a little shaver, I had a belly ache that was NOT going to be soothed by tater soup. I deposited a bowlful of that stuff back on the kitchen floor, and I have not been able to stand the sight or the smell of tater soup, since!

 

[ALACOWMAN]

chicken... got burned out on it during my 1st wifes learning process... never cared if i seen it again... last few years i redeveloped a taste for it,,,

 

[M5farm]

green peas (china berries)- forced to eat them when i was a kid. I will eat anything else. grew up with great cooks so alot of things stir up memories. I look at the bucket of chitlins at the store and memories of killing hogs. fresh souse, eggs and brains, liver and lite stew homemade biscuits. Nobody could cook like my maw maw. I see all of these post about a distaste for something because of a food I guess I look at it differently foods conjure up great memories for me.

 

[ALACOWMAN]

green peas (china berries)- forced to eat them when i was a kid. I will eat anything else. grew up with great cooks so alot of things stir up memories. I look at the bucket of chitlins at the store and memories of killing hogs. fresh souse, eggs and brains, liver and lite stew homemade biscuits. Nobody could cook like my maw maw. I see all of these post about a distaste for something because of a food I guess I look at it differently foods conjure up great memories for me.

i got memories of hog head souse,, :yuck: i dont care for anything that squeaks when you chew it.... gives me the allovers