The recent article in The Wall Street Journal: Playing Kitchen Detective, spoke to me as a food writer and recipe creator.
My family is scattered all over the country. In my personal history, it is fleeting memories that are deeply entwined with foods. I do not remember what my mother's voice sounds like, but I have her cookie bar recipe, written in her own hand. This is the only thing I own from someone who died when I was only 4.
My grandparents, died when I was 5. The memories that they left with me are almost solely food related. This may be from the underlying hunger of being a third child to a widowed man, who worked at a paper mill. I like to think, that it was simply because food has always been so interesting, that I keep these special thoughts working in the forefront of my mind (not unlike my 9 year old sourdough starter in the cupboard).
Not having someone tell me the rules of cooking, created a fearlessness in the kitchen, that helps me recreate recipes of family members that are only a whisper of a memory in my mind. When I make my bread and butter pickles, cucumber and onion have to be sliced so thinly that each piece ends up translucent. Why? Because that is how my grandmother's pickles always were.
My mother's recipe for cookie bars contain Oleo. I would assume that means margarine, so I use coconut oil as a substitute. I can't imagine she would want her grandchildren eating Oleo, now that we know more about it. It is easy to imagine that she would be as rebellious and creative with food as I am. We are genetically similar, although I am twice the age that she was when she had her accident. I like to think she would want to be just as informed.
Even my frugal nature, I attribute to the time spent following my grandmother around as she prepared food. The smell of her percolated coffee and fried fish eggs are still in my head, as I mix and stir, slice and taste my way back to her kitchen.
The history of my family can be found on my dinner table.
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