Writing Through Cancer

It all leads to a story… The more powerful the story behind the food, the more it evokes the memory, which in turn enhances the flavour. (From: “Food with a Story to Tell,” The Guardian, Sept. 2013)

Take some flour. Oh, I don’t know,
like two-three cups, and you cut
in the butter. Now some women
they make it with shortening,
but I say butter, even though
that means you had to have fish, see?

You cut up some apples. Not those
stupid sweet ones. Apples for the cake,
they have to have some bite, you know?
A little sour in the sweet, like love.
You slice them into little moons.
(From:  “My Mother Gives Me her Recipe,” by Marge Piercy, Colors Passing Through Us, 2004).

Yesterday was Canadian Thanksgiving, and for several days in advance, food and recipes were on my mind…  Despite abandoning our dining table, one with extra leaves, and the roomy kitchen of our former home for a city apartment and small dining room table, I invited both sides of our extended Toronto family to share our holiday dinner.  I would come to question my sanity multiple times between issuing the invitation and preparing the meal, but late yesterday afternoon, seven of us sat around a configuration of our small dining table and another folding table to share the Thanksgiving meal.

At any holiday meal shared with family, there are new recipes to try and some old favorites from many years.  While I like to try out new dishes often, there were two perennial favorites on the menu.  One had to be on the table, a  family favorite, a casserole, named “Broccoli Soufflé” and given to me by my mother-in-law when I was a young bride.  The other, a yam casserole with marshmallow topping–a dish my grandmother and aunts served every Thanksgiving, was requested by my 8 year old granddaughter.  She eagerly helped prepare it, meticulously placing the miniature marshmallows one by one on top of the yams.  Neither my husband nor I eat broccoli soufflé or yam casserole at any other time–our dietary habits changed long ago.  Yet not surprisingly, the old recipes are laden with history and memories of people and Thanksgivings of the past.  And yesterday, just as happens at every family holiday dinner, the stories ignited by those traditional dishes were shared once again.  It’s no surprise that food stimulates everyone’s memories and stories.

Food plays a part of our history, as individuals and as a people. Food we consider “traditional,” no matter our heritage, triggers memory; stories are rediscovered and retold,  memories of long ago relatives, traditions that were so much a part of who we once were as children, the lives we took, in our youth, for granted.  During my childhood, every holiday included large family gatherings with aunts, uncles and cousins of all ages.  Fast forward to my adulthood when, intent on adventure and fulfilling dreams, my husband and I first moved to Canada, separated by well over 2500 miles from my huge extended family. I woke up filled with  nostalgia and longing on more than one Thanksgiving.  Making some of the dishes I knew so well helped ease the sense of loneliness, and gradually, as my husband and I had two daughters, we began to create our own family holiday traditions, but ones that also incorporated food of our childhoods.

“Recipes can help bridge generations, reveal unexpected characteristics of a culture, or simply fill an afternoon.” This statement appeared in the introduction to a writing prompt featured a few years ago in The Time is Now newsletter published monthly by Poets & Writers’ Magazine.

Think about it.  Food enlivens many of our senses, so it’s little wonder that a well-loved meal can stimulates so many memories.   Sometimes, even food we love can become unpleasant to us because of the associations we have with it. In fifth grade, I abruptly turned against my favorite “Thousand Island” salad dressing after a severe concussion from a bicycle accident a short time after I’d eaten a salad doused with it.  I never ate it again, the memory of the nausea in the aftermath of the concussion too vivid.

Try as I might–and I have many times–I’ve never managed to duplicate the same delicious oatmeal raisin cookies my grandmother made and I happily ate.  She lived across the street from my kindergarten classroom, and daily, I went to her house to wait for my father to pick me up after work.  Those afternoons, of all my food-related memories, just might be my favorite.  Every afternoon, a glass of milk and an oatmeal raisin cookie waited for me at her kitchen table.  We sat across from each other. She, sipping a cup of creamy coffee and telling me stories of my father.  Her kitchen was always filled with the aromas of cake, pie or cookies, ready for my father, uncles and aunts who loved her baking as much as I did and often dropped by for a visit over something delicious.   But the after school time was reserved for the two of us, sharing stories, an oatmeal cookie and time together.   While she told stories about her life and my father’s, often exaggerated and always colorful, I listened with rapt attention.  Not only was I was learning about my family’s history, I was developing a lifelong love of story.  It was time I cherish even now, with grandchildren of my own.

In the yellow kitchen her pink hands
play with creamy dough. Squares of sun frame
things that shine; spoons, cups, hair…

She boils water, opens wine, puts vegetable in pots.
Lights click. Smells blossom.

Everything feels suddenly invited.

(From “Pasta,” by Kate Scott, Stitches, 2003)

Writing Suggestions:

This week, think about food and the recipes that have been a part of your family’s traditions.

• Begin writing whatever you can remember of a recipe from your childhood or another time in life, and any memories emerge, explore them.
• Write about the memory of a meal, of life around the dinner table, of the smells or objects in a grandmother’s or mother’s kitchen.
• Perhaps you traveled to a country or place where the food was new to you. Write about the experience.
• Have you had an experience that turned food you loved into food you cannot stand?  What happened?  Write it.