"memories" news and stories

From the time I was 11 years old, when I was sick, I would be allowed to stay home alone. I loved the freedom of having the entire house to myself, and despite my coughs and sniffles, would often take advantage of the solitude to do a bit of kitchen experimentation. My favorite thing to make was homemade hashbrowns. I didn't know much about the properties of frying back in those days, so I never used enough oil to get a crispy mound of shredded potatoes. Instead, I'd end up with a pile of grey (albeit, still tasty) potato bits.

Last Friday, a friend sent me a link to the xkcd cartoon you see above and it immediately made me think of those days at home, sneakily making hashbrowns. How about the rest of you? Anyone else have a home-sick-from-school specialty?

Source

Molly Wizenberg, the Seattleite behind the lyrical food blog, Orangette, is now appearing in Bon Appétit. Wizenberg's first monthly "Cooking Life" column is in the March issue, on stands now. In it, she tackles fear of baking with yeast, providing readers with a yummy-looking recipe for cinnamon rolls with cream cheese glaze.

If you haven't read Orangette, you should start - it's like reading a novel. A novel that's mostly about food. While her posts can sometimes get a little too folksy with the "oh goshes" and "darns," others, like the one about cooking with her father, will make you cry with their brilliant, raw emotion.

Molly's also got one of the great foodie love stories of the modern era. Her now-husband, Brandon, was introduced to her blog by a friend, tried her recipe for lemon cake and was so inspired he emailed her offering to take her out to dinner. Problem was, he lived in New York, she in Seattle. Three weeks later he flew out and they fell in love over gelato and strolls through Pike Place Market. When they got engaged a year later Molly got nearly 200 well-wishing posts on Orangette. Sweet, no?

Source

In my regular life in Philadelphia, I do all my own cooking. I've been living with a roommate for the last few years, but we have never gotten in the habit of sharing the task of cooking or mealtime. On occasion I'll have dinner with friends and we'll share in the cooking, but when it comes to breakfast and lunch, I am always on my own.

One of the joys of being at my parents' house for the holidays is the fact that the cooking gets shared. Last night my mom and I made a pot of chicken soup together and it was wonderful to share in the chopping, stirring and clean up together. This morning I was sitting at the dining room table when I heard my dad rustling around in the kitchen, opening the fridge, getting out a pan and breaking some eggs. He popped his head around the doorway, looked at me and said, "Scrambled eggs with cheese?"

I nodded emphatically and within a couple of minutes the plate you see above had appeared in front me. I took a bite and sighed in happiness as the taste of the tender eggs and sharp cheese moved across my tongue. Then I said, "I think eggs just taste better when someone else makes them for you!"

What are the foods that just taste better to you when someone else makes them for you? Is there some comfort food from childhood that one of your parents still makes for you? Have you taken to making that same food item for your own kids?

As I've mentioned before, my dad typically makes a vat of gravy for Thanksgiving that nears the one-gallon mark. This means that in our house, gravy is not a scarce resource. It flows abundantly and when the gravy pitchers (boats are too puny for our purposes) run dry, it is easy to hop and refill them from the stock pot on the stove. However, I've come to understand that in other households, gravy is a valuable commodity, not to be wasted.

The first year I realized that not every family does gravy the way my family does gravy was when one of the pitchers accidentally slipped from my mom's fingers as she was passing it around the table and let loose its contents all over the green table cloth. An old friend of my parents had joined us for dinner that night and as soon as the gravy spilled, he leaped up, grabbed a teaspoon and started bailing the gravy back into the pitcher. When he was growing up, there was never enough gravy and so each drop was like gold to him, not to be wasted. He could not be calmed until we reminded him of the four quarts of gravy still waiting in reserve. Once he realized that there would be enough, he laughed, let us sop up the spill with some kitchen towels and we all settled down to eat again.

This story, of the night a friend tried to save the spilled gravy, has become one of my family's classic Thanksgiving stories. Whenever my mom and I start talking about it, we inevitably end up laughing, feeling affection for the friend and warmth from the memory.

Just about everyone I know has some Thanksgiving event that was unfortunate when it happened, but has become part of their holiday lexicon. What's yours?

Source