RECIPES REMEMBERED

Recipes made become memories. I mean, who doesn’t have a personal story about a holiday dinner. True, some of them were disasters but after time passes, they become remembrances to laugh over together and to share with others. Many of our family/friend stories revolve around food. Have we not gathered together to share a meal and to share our stories while we eat that meal? The wine we drank with the food (after I grew up) made the stories flow a bit easier and maybe a bit exaggerated, but who checks anyway.

Birthdays. My mother always allowed my two brothers and me to choose our menu for our birthdays. She didn’t say “choose your menu” rather she said, “What do you want for your birthday supper?” That always came before what kind of cake did we want. These were hard choices to make for a child with a healthy appetite. Mom was a dynamite cook.

For me it came down to Southern Fried Chicken --with Milk Gravy –she made the best, or Fried Ripe Tomatoes, Mashed Potatoes, & Milk Gravy. She was always nervous, fearing someone knocking on the door when we were eating the fried tomato dinner, thinking it looked like mush and didn’t look proper enough for a dinner. I could have cared less what it looked like. Ahhh. Memories of youth.