Food Memoir

For the sake of making up for lost time, here is another item I wrote for the food writing class I took. The assignment was to write a "food memoir," a story or collection of stories based around food that are special to you. I couldn't think of one, pivotal moment at the time, so I started at the begining and let it flow from there. I was scared to death to have this piece read aloud in class (as we did each week), because it is so personal, almost spiritual. You may think I'm crazy, I mean, it's food, but food is also family, friends, and unforgettable moments. This was also one of the high scored papers I turned in.


The Unsuspecting Foodie

I think my best friend in high school, Mallory, knew before I did. She knew when I was thrilled to find a garlic press in my Christmas stocking. She knew when I was reading Better Homes and Gardens and bookmarking recipes instead of obsessing over Justin Timberlake in Seventeen. I soaked up culinary knowledge like a sponge, and excreted it to anyone who would listen, but still I never thought I’d end up making it a career.
On the occasion that my father was home in time to make dinner, he had one specialty: stir-fry, and a damn good one, at that. The secret was fragrant Chinese Five Spice. Maybe he’d make it with chicken, beef, salty ham, or my favorite, shrimp. My older brother, Richard, and I would fight to spear the last tender lumps of fried egg from the wok.
Dad was also a pro a one thing my mother would never attempt without much cursing and finally giving up, and that is pie dough. There was only one kind of pie in our house, and that was Dad’s wild blackberry. I still wish I had his patience for mixing but not overmixing, rolling it to the perfect thickness, a beautifully crimped edge. We picked the blackberries from the field behind our suburban home and never bought them from a store. These were sun-ripened, cow manure fertilized, irrigation ditch blackberries, which Richard and I ate like candy. My father also had a knack for determining just the right amount of sugar and tapioca to add to them for a filling that was oozy but firm enough to hoist with fork. It amazes me how he can execute something so manly one minute, like roto-tilling the garden or changing the oil, and then the next he is turning out the most tender, supple pie I have ever experienced. My high school held a dessert auction to raise money for the marching band, and Bob Wille’s pie sold for $160.
My mother, on the other hand, is a human can opener. Maybe it was her lack of food prowess that inspired me to hone my own. Our nightly meals were a rotation of tacos, rubbery chicken strips, and basic spaghetti, with a can of some vegetable thrown on the side. She has gotten more adventurous in her later years, but back then it was no frills and certainly nothing from scratch unless it was Christmas or Thanksgiving. Being a nurse, she also thrust her penchant for healthy eating into the mix. Soda and ice cream were limited to every other day, and we never bought those devious Little Debbie cakes, fruit snacks, or chips other than tortilla. On your birthday, my brother and I were allowed to pick a box of sugary cereal. The rest of the time it was plain Cherios or equivalent, probably a generic brand. If you wanted something sweet, you’d probably have to make it. So I did.
I think it was around the age of 13 that I started making dinner for my family every night. I would get home from school around three and have the afternoon to prepare, defrost. It was a better deal than Mom’s usuals, and I enjoyed doing it. I love a challenge, and that was exactly what I found: How can I use this and this to make a meal? If I don’t have this, what can I use instead? My brother was both my biggest fan and harshest critic (although he’d usually end up eating everything anyways). He was never a big help in the kitchen, and rarely cooked beyond cereal, but he’d readily sample anything I put in front of him, and I knew his feedback was honest. Sometimes he got too eager, especially when it came to desserts. On one occasion, I was pulling a cookie sheet out of the oven and didn’t realize he was standing behind me. Of course, he didn’t have a shirt on (some 17-year-old male rite of passage to show off his new crop of chest hair) and I swung around with a blazing hot tray and burned him right above the hip bone. The three inch long scar tilts up, just like the lip of the cookie sheet.
Oh, and how I loved making desserts. The only meal devoted solely to pleasure. The crown jewel of dinner. The unexpected Christmas bonus check. Desserts generally have a more involved process than savory foods. Baking, for one, must follow a strategic formula, not a dash of this and a handful of that. When I was concentrating on a recipe, I couldn’t think about anything else. Not the term paper, boyfriend issues, girlfriend issues. Perhaps it also fed my procrastination habit, but we’ll figure that out later. When I was making dessert I had to focus, and this sort of meditation was a comfort. There were times when I didn’t even care so much what the outcome was, I just need to be in the kitchen, up to my elbows in dough, and at peace.
To me, it was a hobby, like someone who enjoyed knitting or playing guitar. Mallory would beg me, again, for cheesecake and shortbread cookies. I would happily add it to my schedule, like an extra homework assignment I’d actually enjoy doing. “You could make a living doing this, you know,” she finally said one day. Her family started to try and pick names for my restaurant.
When it all started to sink in, when I finally realized my love of everything food related was not exactly normal, I began looking for culinary schools. The first time I stepped into one of those industrial lab kitchens, I couldn’t stop smiling. It was like coming home, my refuge, my mother ship. This is where I belong, among rows of glistening stainless steel and low moaning ovens, the sweet smell of propane gently tickling my nose. I took my first hit of food heroin and I was hooked. My brother said, “Don’t get fat.”