Tastes Like a Memory - Final Draft

Food is always best when it tastes like a memory. When after that first bite goose bumps run up your arms and you seamlessly drift away; lost in the first time you had your best meal yet and waiting for the next delicious bite. I always get that way with food. Sometime when I was growing up I remember seeing a show about tasting food. The tasters would take small bites and move their tongue on and off the roof of their mouth getting a better taste of what the food was made of. I got in the habit of doing what I saw and after time it became just part of the way I ate. Trying to figure out what spices the cook used or how it was prepared to get the certain texture it has. After too long it just made sense to really taste the food and not just eat it. In doing that, certain dishes really tend to stick out and after eating them again you remember what it was like the first time. I have tried many things that rate goose bumps and truly sooth my soul. Its amazing that our minds can create memories that tie themselves to taste, smell, and sound. That eating something can take you back to your childhood or take you to a foreign country, even cure a cold.

The first food that really got goose bumps raised was my moms baked beans. She makes them in a crock pot and uses real bacon and several different beans. I have asked for the recipe before but she says that it is always different and that she got it from my grandma so its been tweaked anyways. Not knowing the recipe might make them taste better then they really are though. Kind of in the way that chicken noodle soup still makes you feels better when you have a cold. Its not the soup, it’s the way that our moms take care of us and do everything to make us feel better. The magic is in the memory and mystery of not knowing how it was made, just knowing how it made you feel. Little did we know at the time but subconsciously our mind was at work making connections that would last a lifetime.

I met my wife when I was in high school and had no idea what impact she would have on my food driven memory. Her mother grew up in Germany and cooked meals as authentic as she had them when she lived there. I would often have dinner at their house five days out of the week so I got very used to the home cooked meals. Everything was large portions and something new was always on the menu. My favorite dish of hers is a mix German-American meal. Schnitzel, which is a thinly cut, breaded and seasoned fried chicken breast with brussel sprouts and shells mac n’ cheese. Its an amazing dish that has everything. A great German chicken dish mixed with a child’s most hated and loved foods. When I would come home on leave, from the Marine Corps, it was the first meal I would request. Just the smell of it cooking would make me feel at home, when I really felt surreally out of place. Making a point to eat that meal as my first when I got home further ingrained the positive memory of it. Any time I eat it now days I get a nostalgic feeling because I was so used to eating when I would only be home for a week or two. The meal has in turn taking a different meaning in my post-military life; serving as a reminder of what home is and how much you can really miss it.

The way I enjoy food today is a direct response to the way I was raised. Partly because of the childhood memories that I already discussed but also because I was forced to try everything once before I could say I didn’t like it. Having an open mind when it comes to food gave me a great experience when I was stationed overseas in Okinawa, Japan. The food in Okinawa was different from anything I had ever had before. It was the first place that I ate sushi and because of that all the sushi I have ate in the U.S. tastes like the Gordon‘s fisherman prepared it. Pickled plums, pig ears, escargot, and goya champuru furthered my hunger for the extremes of taste. The impression that the Okinawan food culture had on me was profound and developed me further in an international sense. It also left me with cravings that can’t be meet. I’m forced into Whole Foods searching for pickled ume (a plum) and fresh sashimi to make my own sushi with since John Holly’s can’t fit the bill. But in all my time in Okinawa I never forgot about my hometown meals. Cookies in the mail would remind me that I had a family at home and that even half a world away you can sometimes still smell your own kitchen.

Now that I am married I don’t eat the same way I used to. My wife is a semi-vegetarian and health food nut. Everything we eat is organic, whole grain, farm raised, gmo free and locally fresh. I like it this way though. Now when I get a sandwich elsewhere, I think about whether it is whole grain bread or if the veggies are organic. And when I think about that, I think about her. She found the easiest way to keep herself on my mind and that’s way is clearly with food. It’s the human mind, wonderfully working its ways in connecting what we love with what loves us. As a population that is only getting bigger and more disconnected from each other with electronic distractions; a good meal together may be the last thing we share. Sitting down with each other at the table and eating food cooked with love builds fondness for one another and sets in motion feelings that connects to the taste, smell, and sound of the food we eat. Our parents stressing family dinner at the table together may have understood the deeper meaning. Subconsciously setting our taste buds to hone in on the home in home cooked meal and making sure that when we come to have dinner with them after leaving the nest that we leave remembering what our favorite first meal was, and why.