This weekend, I made Impossible Cheeseburger Pie (although Betty Crocker is now calling it “Impossibly Easy Cheeseburger Pie,” for some reason). This was one of those dishes that my mom made regularly when I was growing up, and one bite just sends me back twenty years, sitting in our family room, eating dinner on our TV trays while I read a book (no matter how many times Mom asked me not to do that while we were eating). Walks around the neighborhood in the summertime make me crave the old Jell-O Pudding Pops, with their swirls of chocolate and vanilla and that thin crunchy layer of ice, since that was our treat when we’d get home from a long walk. Everyone has tastes that just evoke “home” for them, so today’s LTP is this: what foods remind you of your childhood, and do you ever eat them now, as an adult?
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LTP: 8/25/11
4 replies on “LTP: 8/25/11”
My mom is a great cook. She is adventurous and mostly fearless in her choices too. I have many favourite dishes from my childhood, but — for whatever reason — the two things that ‘take me back’ more than anything else are stupidly simple.
One is cooked macaroni with diced canned tomatoes (with all the juice) and salt and pepper. The tomatoes are added just after draining the pasta and just heated through before serving. That’s it. This was usually a quick winter night meal.
The other was only served in summer at BBQs: cottage cheese with chopped green onions and salt and pepper (not too much salt, cottage cheese is fairly salty already). You had to make it a bit in advance for the onion flavour to take all though the cheese.
Oh, pudding pops, how I miss thee. I also still read at the dinner table. Reading and eating are two of my favorite things, made even better together.
So many of my childhood memories are tied to cooking and eating with family, but I can’t recall any details right now – I’m too busy mourning the loss of pudding pops.
The ice layer was always a delicious mystery.
My grandmother used to make this meatball dish. It was called Sweet&Sour Meatballs, but I’ve never been able to find a recipe that mirrors it, and my mother can’t replicate the taste, no matter how hard she tries, which is a bummer.
Christmas cookies that always send me back: double chocolate cherry drops, nutmeg logs, peanut brittle, jan hagel, coffee-toffee bars, homemade fudge with walnuts.