GOOD FOOD MEMORIES

    Since we’re coming up on a holiday of thanks, sharing with friends and family and good food, I wanted to share some of my Good Food Memories.

    I have heard that scent is very important to memory, but I find that food also is helpful in recalling things of the past.  For instance, I cannot eat a corn dog without recalling a memory from a carnival years ago.  And those big black and white cookies?  Fuggidabout it!  I will always remember my first trip to a real New York Deli!

     The smell of popcorn takes me back to the Saturday morning movie matinees where I think every kid in town went.  I have great memories of seeing all the Edgar Allan Poe movies with my brother and cousins and a theatre full of screaming kids.  And there are some shocking food memories, too.  Such as the time my cousin was eating a Bid Daddy candy bar.  You remember those hard caramel candy bars on a stick that you’d bite into and it felt as though it was going to pull the fillings right out of your teeth?  Anyway, he bit into the candy bar and pulled it away from his mouth to find his front tooth  sticking out of the top of the bar.

      At one point in my life I got very much into baking and very much into baking sourdough bread.  I had my sourdough starter which I mixed with water and flour, put in a Styrofoam cooler with a small light and a thermometer to keep it at the perfect temperature and I grew my sourdough starter.  The bread was great and it was really fun getting that starter up and running.  Then there was noodle making, and clay pot cooking and fun with filo and wonton wrappers.

     I remember all those endeavors with great fondness and there was great fun involved with my family, friends and loved ones.  What fun food memories do you have? 

      I wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving and hope you make some new fun food memories this holiday.

Nancy A. Niles is the author of Vendetta: A Deadly Win and Lethal Echoes.