Foods that remind us of the dear departed.

Warrigal

Warrigal

SF VIP
Location
Sydney, Australia
It's the week before Christmas but it is also Summer so Christmas fare in Australia is a mixture of traditional English foods - fruit cake and plum pudding, fruit mince pies and so on. We don't do egg nog or mulled wine because the temperature would make these very unpalatable. Cold drinks, alcoholic or otherwise, are the ticket.

Ham, chicken and turkey is more likely to be served cold with salads than it is to be served hot with baked veggies. All varieties of fruits are in season right now. Mangoes, cherries, strawberries and blueberries, water melon and cantaloupe and summer stone fruits such as peaches, nectarines and apricots are all in abundance.

Today I was doing a shop and I couldn't resist buying a couple of luxuries - some ripe figs and fresh lychees. My mother loved figs and we even had a fig tree but the birds got most of the fruit. My mother in law and I used to share a feed of lychees at Christmas time. I would peel them and we would enjoy them together.

One fig and one lychee brought back many happy memories for me today. What foods remind you of loved ones who have passed on and when you eat them is it an conscious act of remembrance ?
 

I have never been able to equal either my aunt’s gravy, or her little Yorkshire puddings. Gramma’s macaroni, cheese, and tomato was the best also.
 

Most of the things that I cook these days bring back memories of the dear old souls that used to cook and care for me. When I make some of the old favorites it is my way of spending time with them and honoring their memory.

Here is one of those recipes.

Date Cake

1 1/2 -2 cups of whole pitted dates cut into pieces, don’t drive yourself nuts looking for a package with the exact amount.
1 cup solid vegetable shortening (I use Crisco)
2 cups boiling water
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 t vanilla
2 cups AP flour
1 cup roughly chopped walnuts

Mix dates, shortening and boiling water. When the shortening has melted add sugar, eggs, soda, salt vanilla, flour and nuts. Bake in a 9 x 13 pan at 350 degrees for approximately one hour, I start checking after about 50 minutes. Cool to room temperature and frost using your favorite cream cheese frosting recipe. If you can find cream cheese with pineapple use that instead of plain cream cheese.
 
These 2 remind me of my mother... She was not an original recipe maker. :)

Sausage and sauerkraut meatballs - a recipe she got from my girlfriend's mother

Deep dish pizza (pie) - a recipe she got from my aunt, who got it from an Italian lady, who worked at the same factory she did. Nothing like the pizza we know today.

My father loved raw cucumber slices in vinegar. Reminds me of him when I smell cucumbers, but I could never stand raw cucumbers. :p
 
I never eat asparagus without remembering my mother. She and I used to go to the store and buy a big batch of it. After we cooked it, we would count the stalks so both of us got an equal amount. Then we would make pigs of ourselves. No one else in the family liked it so no sense wasting it on them.
 
When I was a little girl, my mother used to take me to the local Chinese restaurant for chop suey. We lived in a small town, and it was just one of those little cafes where you sit at the stool by the counter and eat. I don’t remember that it even had booths; but we always ate at the counter, regardless.
The chop suey came in a bowl with a little side dish of plain white rice, which you could either eat along with your chop suey or mix it in. I didn’t much care for the rice, so I usually mixed it in, rather than trying to eat it plain. (It, of course, had to be eaten because of all of those starving kids in China that we all heard about every meal.)
Now, whenever we eat at any Chinese restaurant, I always think of my mother and those wonderful bowls of chop suey we used to have together.
 

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