Yesterday was - whisper it gently - the sixtieth birthday of a friend from university days, now living in Texas. Yee, and indeed, ha. I ordered as a gift for him - and in spite of the company saying it took about three days to deliver the goods, they are only due to arrive at the end of the month, making it nine to get there - something rather sentimental.
That gift - he doesn't read this as far as I'm aware - comprises foods that are reminders of home, and in two cases of undergraduate times. Amazing - or not - how often food is at the forefront of memories. In that case it was Jammie Dodgers, a very seventies biscuit somehow, and the ginger biscuits he took to buying when he realised they were not my favourites, so I'd be less likely to take any when (if) offered. There's other stuff in the package, all of it the sort of foods that make dentists rich.
Some of my strongest childhood memories are likewise linked to food. Watching a cartoon while eating creamed kidneys on toast (still love them); freaking out when I found at one restaurant that the fish I had chosen from a tank was going to be killed for my meal (doesn't stop me loving fish now, though); discovering real fondue at a café while on a camping holiday in Interlaken; the gargantuan turkeys we had for at Christmas, lasting well into January and not lamented once finally finished; warm-from-the-oven real Cornish pasties on holiday there... I hope and expect that Sternest Critic will have his own versions, and that they will mostly be of stuff he will want to eat again in his later years, as I do with mine - except those stupidly huge turkeys.
No comments:
Post a Comment