One of the things I have envisioned for this blog since its inception is to have others share their favorite food stories, too. This has little to do with being a “writer” and everything to do with being a person in this world who has enjoyed the sensory experience of partaking of wonderful food in the company of others. Those others may be family members, friends or strangers. Your experience could have taken place in your grandma’s kitchen, your neighbor’s backyard or at a food vendor on a street in China. What is important is that the memory of that moment, with that food, in the presence of that person or those people has stayed with you.
I love it when the smell of food provokes a memory. In vivid detail, the movie reel of that experience plays back in my mind. Time and space fall away. Or sometimes the memory of a special time can make my mouth water and my stomach growl.
Oh, to taste those oatmeal cookies my grandmother used to make … crumbly on the outside, moist on the inside! The faint scent of cinnamon wafts the air. A glass of creamy chocolate milk poured by her familiar and gentle, blue-veined, old hand sits on the table … the kitchen window open, a stretch of sunlight dancing its way to the linoleum floor. These bits and pieces of sensory memory recreate that precious moment, and I feel blessed for having experienced it.
My book, The Work of Her Hands, is a collection of such memories about my maternal grandmother. We all have them … grandmothers or special people who helped create wonderful experiences for us around food. It was my sons’ memories around my own cooking that actually got me started on this blog, for goodness sake!
If you have a great food memory, please share it with me. If you don’t want to write it, I would be pleased to write it “with” you. Just contact me and we will figure it out.
Once a month I will post a guest’s story. It could be yours!
Eat well. Be happy.
Plynn Gutman 