The taste memory of plums

by Marisa McClellan, Posted Aug 29th 2007 @ 10:46AM

a cluster of three plums on a wooden window sill

I was sitting at my computer yesterday afternoon, mindlessly reading blogs and looking for a little writing inspiration when I picked up a plum that I had gotten from the kitchen just a little while earlier and bit into it. The taste of that particular plum (its brethren are pictured above) transported me back 20+ years and several thousand miles, into the back yard of the house in which my family lived during our Los Angeles years. That house had several plum trees, a really large one in the back and a couple of smaller ones along the side of the house, on the strip of ground that separated our space from the neighbor's.

As a young kid I got a profound sense of pleasure whenever I got the opportunity to pick my own food. It satisfied my longing to be like Laura Ingalls Wilder. My mom often made jam with the plums from those trees, although in those days it was always a little too saucy as she couldn't bring herself to add the sugar required to make it jell. Still, it was always delicious, especially because it came from our yard.

I do love it when a bite of some seemingly ordinary foodstuff gives me the opportunity to travel through time and space. Are there any foods that are similarly evocative for you?

Photo by Marisa McClellan

Filed Under: Ingredients
Tags: comfort food, food memory, FoodMemory, fruit, Laura Ingalls Wilder, plum jam, plums, taste memory

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

8-30-2007 @2:44PM W.C. Williams said... I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Reply