Food memories

This is a free writing exercise.  I am not organizing my thoughts, just letting them flow from memory to memory.

My grandmother’s house in San Marcos, we ate Mexican food.  My grandfather made a carrot salad with raisins and mayonnaise, and pecans.  I loved it even though I found it a little bit gross.  My grandmother and her fruit.  Always, every breakfast, my grandmother believed that we should eat some fruit.  She would have prunes, sliced oranges, grapes, grapefruit… it always felt like a chore the way she insisted on fruit with breakfast, but the English muffins with butter were delicious. 

My other grandmother made amazing meatloaf.  I still remember it, even now after 15 years as a pescatarian and her dead now two years, not having lived in that house for 17 perhaps… since my grandfather died.  My grandfather loved pecan pie and ice cream.   He loved other foods that we didn’t realize until he had passed away.  We had no idea about the pickled pigs’ feet until we found tens of bottles of them in the pantry after his death.  Their house smelled of cigarette smoke and cloves in oranges.  Burnt countertops from cigarettes forgotten created a sporadic semi-pattern throughout the kitchen and dining room.  The foreign, fascinating sculptures and wood carved masks and figures cluttered the cabinets and shelves by the dining room table.  Dark wood, low orange light. 

Later at my aunt’s house, my grandmother could no longer taste much, but still loved to eat.  She delighted in a grapefruit and avocado salad that was simple but tangy and fatty and delicious.

I remember my mom’s quiche, her corn-cheese soup, her paella that we eat on Thanksgiving instead of the traditional turkey.  I remember the delicious meals that we would make together, or she would make.  My dad’s shrimp and raw oysters.  My brother’s picky eating.  Bread and cheese.  One year it was burnt toast and mozzarella.  Another year cheddar, and the bread didn’t need to be burnt.  The sodas.  I find sodas revolting now, but as a child I reveled in the sweet syrup that came out of the machines or tingled my nose in orange tangy flavors at the lake with my aunts, uncles, and grandparents.