Food memory

You call that a peach?

Mealy and black inside. I threw all 5 in the compost. Thanks, QFC.  Seasonal fruit was once so delicious we gorged on it when we could. Food memory must be lodged in that reptilian part of the brain, along with other physical sensations we can't forget.

Mom canned dozens of quarts of tomatoes and peaches on the farm. We grew the tomatoes, but piled into the Suburban to buy bushels of peaches in late summer.  The orchard man would take out his pocket knife and give a half to the kids. I remember driving home with sticky juice running down my hand. Another of those visceral memories.

No matter how simple the dinner, we always had dessert, like jello, junket, pudding or just a canned peach half.  The old Pennsylvania Dutch loved their cake and pie. For supper and even breakfast at Grammy's, it would be right on the table with the other food as part of the meal, not something you ate an hour later.

Another food memory: a salty, smoky slice of Lebanon or "ring" baloney on a piece of folded white bread, with a slice of shoo-fly pie on the side.  If someone put that in front of me, would it taste as good? I don't eat like that now, but my brain stem still says "yes."

Speaking of food, it's a chilly morning in more ways than one.  I have some white beans soaking to make chicken chili with some of the hot green chili power I bought in New Mexico. I haven't used any of it yet-- so a culinary experiment. A dash of this, a pinch of that. However it turns out, I'll never be able to reproduce the same exact same recipe.  Sorry, John.