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Category: Family Stories
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Food Memories – Why Are They So Evocative?
What’s your earliest food memory? What triggers it to come up to the surface – is it a smell? A flavour? A texture? How does it make you feel? Does it envelope you in a warm, fuzzy haze of memory, whisking you back to a time and place long since gone? Or does it make your spine tingle with horror?
We often hear stories about someone’s grandma’s amazing apple pie; the recollections of Sunday’s well spent in granny’s kitchen, sifting flour, licking the spoon from the mixing bowl.
I don’t know about you, but those sorts of stories make me feel a mix of emotions, including the not so pleasant ones like envy and regret.
Neither of my grandmothers were the sort to create those kinds of memories; perhaps that had as much to do with a lack of opportunity as anything else, given we lived overseas, or several hours drive away, for most of my childhood.
Even so, I do have food memories of both of them: rancid dripping, festering on a kitchen worksurface, and the all pervasive aroma of unsmoked bacon fat. Not exactly the stuff of nostalgic dreams are they?
I do have other, nicer, food memories thankfully! Most of them originate from the years we spent living in Germany – when I first walked into a newly opened German supermarket here in the UK, the scent memory was so overwhelming that it brought on tears. Even though using those supermarkets is now a regular part of life again, those old associations remain, and it makes me smile in wonder every time.
I had a conversation with someone on instagram a while ago about an ’80s Marks and Spencer Lemon Madeira cake – a shared food memory that was so vivid, even just the thought triggered salivation! Simply typing these words is giving me the experience of the tartness of the lemon; the smooth silkiness of the icing; the finger licking (and hoover requiring!) crumble of the cake. I feel driven to go and bake so that I might satisfy my desire for that taste of a 1980s summer!
However, experience tells me that the disappointment of it not quite living up to my memories will keep my fingers on the keyboard, instead of going and grabbing the mixing bowl.
So why are food memories so powerful? It’s all because of your senses – you didn’t see that coming did you? It’s stating the obvious really isn’t it? But the key thing with food memories, over other types of memories, is that they utilise all of our sensory apparatus, along with all the nuances of the situational and emotional contexts that are going on around us at the time.
Whilst scent can create some of our most evocative memories because of the proximity of the olfactory bulb to the memory making areas of the brain – the amygdala and hippocampus – food memories have multiple layers that get laid down in the brain in a much more immersive way. To my mind it’s a fleeting from of time travel.
The Legacy of Food Memories
Before The Sensory Coach I ran an allergy friendly food business – mostly chocolate, but I also developed and sold packet mixes for bread and cookies. Before that I ran a paleo recipe website, which lead me to write two e-books: A Festive Feast and The Creatively Paleo Icecream Emporium.
The structural thread that runs through all of these endeavours is the importance of the legacy of loving memories.
When I was spending days, weeks, months and sometimes even years trying to develop an allergy friendly recipe, the thing that drove me was the desire for my own family not to miss out on what were often common cultural food memories, and for them to have a bank of family memories to carry with them into adulthood.
As an aside, whilst talking of food culture, if you have netflix then let me recommend a fascinating series I’ve been enjoying recently – Street Food – from the perspective of a person with a shed load of food allergies it’s horrifying, but if you ignore that, it’s a really good watch, and absolutely speaks to everything that I’m talking about in this post.
Tucked into a picture frame in my kitchen is a little card with the George Bernard Shaw quote:
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
They (I don’t know who the ‘they’ is!) also say that cooking is love made visible.
This is certainly my perspective on cooking. When you take this into consideration, alongside the power of food memories, I hope, if you’ve fallen out of love with cooking, or perhaps never even been in love with it, you’ll rethink the value of spending a little time in the kitchen, laying down the strongest of memories for your loved ones; they’ll sustain them long after the kitchen has closed.
Maybe we could start thinking of nutritional value not just in terms of vitamins and minerals absorbed, but as the laying down of sustaining memories, building resilience with every dish we share.
if you need a little help getting started, then my allergy friendly chocoolate course is the perfect place to begin creating those memories.
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Hundred Year Old Squirrel Medicine
Squirrel medicine wasn’t even remotely on my radar, but life has a funny way of spiraling around to make sure you’ve got the message. Take this weekend as a for instance…
It was the 100th anniversary of my Grandad’s birth, sadly he died nearly 32 years ago, but the anniversary felt important to me nonetheless.
In all honesty, it wasn’t until the theme of ancestors started playing in the background of my mind, and coming out in my collage work, that the anniversary entered my consciousness.
I’d promised a newly discovered American cousin that I’d send photos of the gravestone of my Great- Grandfather, to help her with her genealogy research. My Grandma was an Irish immigrant, and when her father died whilst working over here, she and my Grandad bought a triple decker burial plot. When I took the promised photo, I noticed the approaching anniversary; it unleashed lots of memories – my Grandad was my favourite person in the whole world – he was my childhood champion and I knew I had to do something to mark that.
As it happened, I couldn’t get to the grave on the actual date, so I visited at the weekend. I took a very simple spray of rosemary (for remembrance) with a piece of Yorkshire lavender (to celebrate our proud Yorkshire roots). It smelled amazing!
The plot that my grandparents are buried in sits beneath a beautiful copper beech tree. I’ve long loved the idea of a woodland burial myself – the idea that the substance of my body could feed a tree, well it gives me a deep sense of comfort. At some point I’d heard the story of Roger Williams, the man who was ‘eaten by a tree’! Rather than being appalled, I was completely enthralled by the thought of this beautiful circle of life. I’d planted my youngest daughter’s placenta under an apple tree so to be buried under a tree feels like part of the same life giving ritual.
With all of these thoughts running through my mind, hugging the tree – bloody hippy that I am – suddenly took on a whole new meaning.
Well, it’s a good job it was typical bank holiday weather – persistently precipitating (aka pissing it down) and no one else was visiting the cemetery, because I stood on ‘my’ roots, hugged that tree, and cried my eyes out! If you’ve never really, truly hugged a tree, give it a go – don’t do it half heartedly, really go for it. Feel the bark against your cheek, the solidness of the trunk against your body, be quiet and listen in – to what’s going on around and within you. You’ll walk away feeling amazing (ok, you might feel a bit daft too, but so what?).
As I leaned into the tree I knew I was alone, but a sudden rustling brought me back into awareness of my surroundings.
No, there was definitely no one else around.
There it was again.
I looked up, just in time to spot two squirrels, who I’d obviously disturbed from their beech nut collecting, leaping across to the next tree.
I watched, as they ran down the trunk, freezing, one on either side, checking out their surroundings – I’m not going to lie, I had the mission impossible music playing in my head at this point! I whipped out my phone and grabbed a quick video before they ran off across the gravestones. It really lightened the mood!
I was meeting my friend for a brew after I’d seen the grandparents, and of course I told her about the squirrels. Her immediate question was:
‘Have you looked to see what squirrel medicine is about?’
No, I hadn’t. Once we were settled in the cafe, she had a google. Low and behold squirrels are telling you to bring more play into your life. This was really rather appropriate as life has been quite heavy of late, plus, one of the things that my grandad had impressed upon me, was to make sure I enjoyed life and had fun. It was a bit of a goosebumpy moment, but y’know, not massively so. Except that it didn’t end there.
This friend of mine does a weekly oracle card reading for her facebook tribe, that day she did it live from the cafe. She pulled me a card. No, it wasn’t a squirrel, but it was an angel card with the instruction to play. Uh huh. Time to listen then Tech.
One of the things that made my Grandad really special was his ditty writing – he’d write little verses, often in Yorkshire dialect. Way back in the 80s after Prince William was born, we sent a copy of one of his masterpieces to ‘Buck House’, others were written out on beautiful calligraphy scrolls by my cousin and sold at craft fairs. He used them to express his political views, to thank people, to send birthday wishes, and to poke fun – often at his own expense. He was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and very limited in his movement, so his writing gave him something to occupy his time and keep his mind active.
Last year my dad gave me a CD filled with photos of grandad’s ditties. Unfortunately many of them are indecipherable as, ironically, they were written before the arthritis had turned his hands to claws. As the disease progressed, he resorted to using marker pens and writing in capital letters, thus making reading his writing a doddle! As I was going through all the images I came across one that really stood out, as it was written in bright green script.
I was looking at them on the laptop and had to turn my head on its side to read the first part, which had my children looking at me like I’d lost the plot, more so when I started laughing. When I read the ditty out loud my son said:
‘Your Grandad was a bit crackers wasn’t he?’
Yep, he absolutely was, and I bloody love him for it.
What was the ditty? For your delight and delectation here it is….
One day when walking through the woods, a squirrel scurried by.
It scampered up a great big tree and looked at me from high.
It threw a conker down at me and hit me on the head.
Thank god it was no coconut, I could have been quite dead.
Instead the conker split in half, the kernel was laid bare.
The squirrel scampered down and cried: “thank you for standing there!!
I would have had to toil and sweat to get into the nut.
In fact I could have gnawed all day to get a nasty cut
and could have cracked my two front teeth to make all eating tough.
So please! Come walking every day for I’ll watch out for you,
but don’t forget, and take a tip – bring your tin helmet too!”
GBC – or as I like to think of him: The Yorkshire Bard
And there you have it, a funny old spiraling around of squirrels and playfulness. I couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to mark the 100th anniversary of the life of the man I got to call Grandad, than with a bit of nutty squirrel medicine!
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The Violet Earthquake – What African Violets Can Teach Us About Blossoming
African violets are a plant that will forever remind me of my grandmother-in-law. She always had them filling her windowsills, in various stages of propagation.
When she died, almost 20 years ago, the only things we wanted of Nan’s were:
- A little red plastic foot stool that she used to reach up into her cupboards, and which, when she turned it upside down, our toddler twin daughters played row, row the boat in with her.
- A photo we’d taken and had framed for her of ‘gran-nan’ with her four great-grandchildren.
- An African Violet or two.
Over the years I kept her plants alive, but at some point – maybe in a house move, I don’t remember – there were no more of Nan’s violets left.
A few years ago I bought myself a new one from a garden centre; a mini windowsill memorial to a woman who was dearly loved. It turned out to be an awkward little bugger though! No matter what I did it to nurture it, it refused to flourish, with flowers appearing less often than a blue moon. It became a frustrating challenge instead of the smile inducing reminder I’d hoped for.
About a year ago it flowered, which pleased me no end. I posted a picture on Instagram, mentioning in passing that it was such a delight because it rarely blossomed. One of my lovely IG friends, a nutritionist called Jodi from across the pond, responded to my post with a bizarre sounding piece of wisdom:
”It sounds funny, but if you give them a regular ‘earthquake’ every few days, they’ll continue to bloom quite regularly. Just shake the pot bottom against the table a couple of times. Works wonders with shortening the bloom cycle.’
Well it DID sound funny, but I was willing to give it a go, even though it seemed counterintuitive to shake a plant about to encourage it to grow. Of course, Jodi was absolutely right; my little African Violet is looking much healthier, and blooms much more frequently, with an ever increasing number of flowers each time too!
This got me to pondering life’s big questions (I don’t need much encouragement to be fair, it is one of my favourite things to do after all!)
Is the Violet Earthquake a metaphor for the trials of life?
Do we blossom after we’ve had our world shaken?
Pope Paul VI said:
All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.
Is struggle – the violet earthquake – an inevitable part of creating a good and beautiful life?
Let’s hear from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross:
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, know suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.
I reckon that it’s the last part that gives us the answer – it’s not the struggle itself that creates the beauty, but the way it’s handled, and what we make of it. Do we choose to sink? Do we become bitter and twisted? Or do we decide to bloom in spite of the prevailing conditions?
Which brings me back to Nan. One of my all time favourite people, and someone who, certainly in the time that I knew her, bloomed time and again, right up to the painful end.
These beauties speak for themselves. Thanks for the reminder Nan.
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Yawn Power
We all know, at least theoretically, how powerful our beliefs are.
We’ve probably all had the experience of trying to break a habit, so have direct experience of how incredibly hard that can be.
We all carry a set of internal beliefs about ourselves, most likely planted in childhood, that we find impossible to free ourselves from without some pretty major inner work.
We’ve all heard of the placebo effect – so powerful at impacting the outcomes of medical trials that it has to be factored into the results.
We know all this, but do we all really believe it?
It’s hard, without personal evidence, to truly believe a lot of the things we know to be true.
This story will probably just be another of those, possibly interesting, but ultimately worthless to you, anecdotes, but I am going to share it anyway because its simplicity blew my mind.
My son and I were talking about some of the funny things siblings tell you when you’re little. Those things that you wholeheartedly believe to be true, until at some point, many years and much rib pulling later, they disabuse you of this ‘fact’.
When he was little, for some reason that no one knows, his older sisters told him that, if you put your finger in your mouth, it always makes you yawn.
He bought into this completely. He could yawn on demand by putting his finger in his mouth; it was his party trick for years!
Until the day came when they finally admitted that they’d made it up. They couldn’t believe he was still falling for this cunning bit of mind melding, all those years later.
From that point on, once his belief was gone, he could no longer yawn on demand.
He was embarrassed telling me this story, but all I could think was how amazing the power of belief truly is. I found it incredibly exciting; even though I’ve read of countless (far more miraculous) examples of the power of the mind over the body, having someone I’m that close to recount a mundane example to me was … well, mind blowing is the only way I can put it.
As the saying goes:
Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right. ~ Henry Ford
I’d swap think for believe, but it’s pretty much the same principle, huh?
Or is it? Thinking something, and wholeheartedly believing it, are very different kettles of fish. Believing has to be lodged in your cells, whereas thinking can be nothing more than a transitory exploration of ideas… but that’s a topic for another day.