Many of my earliest memories revolve around food. We had an air popper and my Mom made popcorn for movie nights. I remember one night in particular when she popped a big bowl and just as we were about to enjoy it a bird flew into the house. (story elsewhere)
My Mom loved gardening and she planted a food forest in our small backyard in Paso Robles. We had grapevines, rhubarb, artichokes, strawberries, fruit trees, squash, green beans, peas, tomatoes, and more. I loved tending to the garden with her and of course eating a ripe fruit hot from the summer sun was a special treat. That fresh produce was so good, much better than the grocery store stuff we usually had. And like all kids in that area and era, I loved picking and eating wild blackberries.
Later I loved helping her in the kitchen. She worked full time in retail, so unless she had a day off, meals were usually pretty simple, but some were still fun for a child to help prep. We used to do buffet style burritos and salads where we would line up numerous different toppings on the kitchen counter, like grated cheese, carrots, sliced olives, yellow pear tomatoes from the garden, red cabbage, artichoke hearts, spicy and mild salsa, different salad dressings, beans, tuna salad, etc. Those were my favorite to help with, along with chiles rellenos. I loved toasting and peeling the peppers, even though it wasn’t my favorite meal to eat. I remember feeling so proud when she deemed me old enough to use the box grater to grate cheese.
Mom drank Good Earth sweet and spicy tea for years, and that is the smell that makes me think of her, along with the Liz Claiborne perfume she wore when I was a kid.
My grandmother who lived in Paso Robles died when I was quite young, and my memories of her are almost all food centric. She always had Andes chocolate mints and chocolate chip cookies in her cookie jar that were made with M&Ms instead of chocolate chips. She also often had a bowl of chex mix on the coffee table during family gatherings. She had huge hedges of rosemary buzzing with bees at the edge of her property and bisecting the backyard, and camellias and gardenias growing in wine barrel planters outside her back door. The smells/tastes that make me think of her are chocolate and mint together, rosemary, and gardenia.
When I was at my Dad’s every other weekend, money was tight. Our favorite foods to eat together were fingers of orange mild cheddar or fish sticks dipped in ketchup mixed with tabasco sauce. We also ate a tom of dill pickles, pepperoncinis, and gardeniera mix. If we were lucky we might have pickled eggs, or, best of all treats, pickled spicy Thai or serrano peppers from his brother Doug (my favorite uncle, who was quite a cook and baker). Lemons are basically free on the California central coast, so we often had lemonade and I would even eat lemons by the slice. With my Dad, I learned to love spicy and sour foods so much. I became an avid sensory seeker when it came to food. He on the other hand is a simple man, and his go-to meal remains a can of pork and beans, a slice of whole wheat bread, dill pickle slices, and yellow mustard. He isn’t much of a cook. He also loves candy, and we used to go to Costco and get tubs of red licorice, sour licorice, and enormous bags of gummy candy that we would eat way too much of together. I stopped liking sweets when I got pregnant in my early 20s but he continues to love them.
My grandmother who lived in Santa Barbara is the person who taught me how to cook from a recipe. Some of my earliest memories of her are baking sugar cookies together. I loved decorating the cookie cutter shapes with various sprinkles, and especially red hots. We loved watching cooking shows together on PBS and later on the Food Network. Julia Child was our favorite, but we also loved Jeff Smith on “The Frugal Gourmet,” Martin Yan on “Yan Can Cook,” David Rosengarten, and Emeril Lagasse. She subscribed to four magazines that I read cover to cover every week/month by the time I was in junior high: Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Sunset, and Newsweek. She taught me all the basics of cooking meals as well. The smell that brings her to mind most strongly is her favorite tea: Bigelow’s Constant Comment: black tea, orange rind, cinnamon and clove. She also liked Earl Grey on occasion so bergamot also reminds me of her. I became a tea drinker in her house.
Her husband was the grillmaster and breakfast maker. I looked forward to staying over at his house on Friday nights because on Saturday morning he always made his special silver dollar pancakes. He was a quiet and non-demostrative man who showed us kids/grandkids his affection almost solely by taking us out to expensive meals. He especially loved taking me to Chuck’s steakhouse and encouraging me to order the surf and turf. He would also sometimes pick me up to take me to school, but an hour earlier than it started so he could take me out to breakfast first. Every Saturday night the whole family got together at their house and Grampa grilled burgers while Gramma made fries or tater tots and a buffet of fixings like lettuce, sauteed onions, sliced tomatoes, roasted ortega chiles, two types of mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise.
Christmas dinner at Gramma’s house was a beef tenderloin roast with a mustard peppercorn crust. Easter was ham and scalloped potatoes from a box, Thanksgiving was turkey, fresh green beans, mashed potatoes and canned jellied cranberry sauce, and (my least favorite) St. Patrick’s Day was corned beef and boiled cabbage and carrots. Christmas morning was hot apple strudel (yum), stollen (yuck), sausages, bacon, eggs, tea, and hot apple cider. Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday to help prepare the meal because I loved popping the crescent roll containers and arranging them in crescents on a baking sheet. It was also one of my favorite meals of the year. I loved every part of it until the food abomination of green bean casserole appeared one year. Wait, that isn’t true: I’ve always hated all gravy except red eye gravy.
The years I was with my father on Thanksgiving or Christmas, we went out to his Uncle Chuck’s ranch in Carrizo Plains where dozens of cousins, aunts, uncles, my great grandma, and more would have a big potluck every year. I loved these holidays so much. It was bitterly cold outside there, but inside was so warm from both cooking and all the bodies inside. The smells were amazing. I enjoyed the look of the green molded jello salads that some guests would bring, though I hated the taste. I still remember my disgust when I discovered that it had a fake sugary taste utterly unlike real limes and there was dried coconut and canned pineapple inside. Hopefully whoever brought it didn’t notice! The apple, blackberry, cherry, peach, and pumpkin pies, on the other hand, were wonderful. And Uncle Chuck made wonderful homemade vanilla ice cream that was always one of the highlights. We kids got so excited when he would pull one of those 5 gallon drums out of the deep freezer. Vanilla remains my favorite type of ice cream even now that I can’t eat any. We also used to have amazing barbecues out there when they slaughtered a steer at the ranch instead of sending it up to the Harris Ranch feedlots for grain finishing. I remember eating ribs that were as long as my arm. Uncle Chuck always gifted us a big bag of Cantenneo Brothers peppered beef jerky for Christmas. I was told this was made partly with beef from their cattle. They also grew wheat and barley. The ranch is much smaller now, having sold off a lot of land to a solar farm, and their only remaining crop is organic barley.
