The Significance of Memories Made Through Food
I can’t say I grew up as an adventurous eater. The family didn’t have much money and my father was a picky eater. Consequently, our meals, although tasty, did not vary much. I was married before I had potstickers or a taco. My husband introduced me to onions and mushrooms in scrambled eggs. Since those early days, he has been the one to take me on culinary adventures. I had never had crab before I met him. He helped to widen my horizons.
My mother taught me the basics of cooking.
She followed recipes given to her by my great-grandmother. I recall somebody saying that my grandmother did not like to cook. Neddie, my great-grandmother doctored mayonnaise to come up with a delectable sandwich spread. Nobody remembers what she did, though I have tried off and on through the years to replicate it. I have come close, but not quite. It was a cross between mayonnaise and Miracle Whip. Consequently, I enjoy making mayonnaise from scratch. Not the same as hers, but really good stuff. I like it a little on the sweet side and so I use Maruken Rice vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar. I throw in some Beau Monde which is a mixture of onion powder and celery salt. Each recipe is slightly different, and I’ve enjoyed them all.
I remember the way Neddie would make breakfast. It never varied from day to day for her. One of those large Shredded Wheat biscuits on a thin layer of All-Bran with half a banana sliced on top. She ran the biscuit under warm water from the tap to soften it slightly. She would take a small piece of foil to wrap the open end of the leftover banana and put it in a drawer in the kitchen to be used the following morning. Every single morning before breakfast Neddie would stand at the kitchen window looking out at the backyard and drink a small glass of warm water. Every morning. This ritual was as much a part of breakfast as the food.
My father-in-law taught me to be an artist in the kitchen.
He taught me how to find joy there. I would follow him around, at his elbow with a notebook and pencil stopping him as he added in a handful of this and a pinch of that so that I could approximate measurements. We use his recipe for crab cakes, and I always think of him when I make them. He showed me how he made wine (even from dandelions) and free-form apple pies.
To me, comfort food reminds me of good times. From Germany, I love pork schnitzels (breaded pork cutlets), spätzle (noodles) and Semmelknödels (bread dumplings). I love the kind of hot dogs we used to have in Munich where the baguette was on a hot metal spike, the cart operator would squirt mustard down the hole and stuff a 12-inch sausage in the bread. I remember the salads we would have that were presented on a plate arranged in thirds; one-third potato salad, one-third pickled beets, and one-third wilted cucumber salad. And always there was a lovely glass or mug of beer.
I was not so adventurous with the beer. I never got excited about dark beer or the kind we had in Nuremberg that was called rauchbier or smoked beer. However, pretty much each little village had its own brewery and so you could try a new beer every time you went exploring. The beer in the smaller villages, the same as the wine was never exported. It was just for the folks in the immediate area.
My first choice of beer was Paulaner, though Löwenbräu and Spaten were good too. When we returned home from Germany it took me a while to grow accustomed to American beers. They tasted like kinder beer to me which is what kids would have in Germany, a mix of lemonade and beer. The German beer that was imported to the US had been pasteurized and somehow that changed the taste for me, so I chose not to drink it. The only beer I found to my taste once we returned home was Corona and Tsing Tao. Now, I don’t drink anymore, but I do remember what they tasted like.
While we lived in Germany, I developed a taste for sauerkraut. The secret, a tiny old woman told me once when she dragged me back to her kitchen in the restaurant where Dennis and I were having lunch, was to take 3 days to make the sauerkraut. She didn’t speak English and my German was, as they say, sehr schlect (very bad), but she got the point across. Plus, isn’t any picture worth a thousand words? It was in this case.
Use a beef bone to simmer with the kraut (I use a cube of beef bouillon), put a diced potato in to thicken it up, and put a diced onion and a diced apple in for sweetness. Let it simmer for 3 days. I’ve never let it go so long, just for a little bit on the day we have it. Of course, my husband loves caraway seeds on top, though by rights they should go in to simmer with the rest of it. Yes, that is the sauerkraut I remember from Germany.
From our time in Norway, I remember the farmer’s bread we sliced ourselves and open-faced sandwiches. I remember thinly sliced cucumber salads with dill on top and soft ice, swirly towers of soft ice cream in waffle cones. I remember pickled herring which was also popular later in my life when we lived in Germany.
From my mother’s hands, I remember my great-grandmother Neddie’s corn fritters, her meatloaf, and her beef vegetable soup. It took me many years to get out of the habit of making soup for an army. There were seven of us in the family and soup always grew from one pot into two before my mother was finished with it. Lately, I’ve been using two pots just because soup is an economical dish and mostly it freezes well.
Comfort food is still a peanut and jelly sandwich made especially nicer if there are some potato chips on the side and the obligatory glass of milk.
The memories I have made over the years? I take great satisfaction in making my own bread. I enjoy raising sourdough and making my own yogurt. I delight when strawberries are in season to mix up a batch of preserves for toast or yogurt. I have yet to perfect the art of making fried rice. It isn’t absolutely perfect but it comes a close second. Some day.
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