This is an old meme, but I just ran across it while reading the archives of Danno’s Cook’s Journal blog. The point of the meme is to give 5 childhood food memories. Here are mine.
1. Helping Opa (grandfather) plant and tend the backyard garden, in the middle of summer. Remembering the squishy feel of the warm soil between my toes. Him letting me have my own area to grow anything I wanted. Helping him harvest everything and helping Oma (grandmother) prep the beans by snapping off the edges before cooking and freezing them for winter.
2. Taking it upon myself to cook dinner at age 11 without asking permission first, and making pineapple meatloaf that tasted horrible. I figured if it was in a cookbook, it tasted good. I was wrong.
3. Eating all of Oma’s wonderful food, and her showing me how to make it (oh, how I wish I would have paid more attention or wrote things down, some things are lost to me forever now). Sauerbraten, Gulasch, Kartoffelknodel and Brotknodel, Spaetzle, Gemuse mit Kartoffel, Frikadellen, Apfelkuchen, and so much more…
4. The subs at McCluskey’s Deli on the corner of 7th and Main in Millville, NJ. Instead of spending my lunch money on lunch, I’d go there with the $2 and buy an Italian sub (.99), a bag of sour cream and onion chips (.89), and 12 Swedish Fish. All the time. McCluskey’s is long gone, but the memories are still fresh.
5. My mom’s cheesecake, which is the best I’ve ever had. She didn’t bake it that often, but when she did, we descended on it like a pack of wolves.
Those are my choices. What childhood food memories do you have?