Food Memories

I made dinner again last night--take out pizza as seen above.  Some of you read the Good Morning Gloucester blog and they take much nicer pictures of food than this, but the pizza-for-dinner last night got me thinking.  I don't remember that we ever had pizza for dinner when we were young (or at all for that matter).  Pizza was a treat for me and I have fond memories of some of my favorite food treats.  Costa's pizza in Silver Creek remains top on my list.  That pizza was GREAT.  Once in a while, I'd bring a pizza home after work in Walton --maybe from Aiello's?  Mom and Dad both seemed to enjoy that.

I remember only one time that we had pizza with our grandparents in Olean.  I got the clear idea they didn't like pizza--perhaps that's what they told me.  Anyhow, in my little 10 year old brain, "old people" didn't like pizza so I always thought that was a fact of life.  It's kind of strange to me that we didn't have pizza more often --it's fairly cheap especially made by hand from a mix.

Once in a while we'd have fish fry at Foits.  Out to a restaurant with all of us for fish!  I can't say I remember the fish dinners themselves, but I do remember that going to Foits was a treat.  I still enjoy fish fry as a treat.  It's not something I've tried myself.  I'll leave fish to the experts.

Another treat was the mandarin orange, banana slices with confectioners sugar dessert--chilled.  Ummmmm.  I shared that special recipe with my own kids and they have always loved it.  Thinking about it now, I don't imagine that mandarin oranges were normally on Mom's grocery list. I don't recollect having them for anything other than this dessert.  But she would have had to have the mandarins on hand.  I buy them semi-regularly these days to have on hand for fruit salads but I think it must have been an extra expense on the normal grocery list for Mom.  This makes that dessert even more special in my eyes.  If she used mandarin oranges regularly for something else, don't tell me.  Oh!  I just remembered jello with fruit which we never saw after she'd been hospitalized.  Perhaps that's why she'd buy those mandarins.

Dad's "special" barbequed chicken sauce wasn't so much a treat as an event, as I recall.  It required preparing the marinade ahead and soaking the chicken for at least a day.  That was pretty good chicken too.
Another treat would be when Mom made pancakes for dinner, blueberries upon request.  That was never my favorite meal but it wasn't fun for Mom to churn out all those pancakes and she did it once in a while anyhow.  Mom's spaghetti sauce was a treat for me and I like making that for my family too.

I guess that's what makes some food or meal a "treat"--you just know some kind of special effort went into it and it makes you feel like it was all about making you happy.  A lesson I'm happy to carry forward with my children, even though I suspect that the things I thought I was doing special for them won't be the fond memories they share around the table over beers some evening in the future.  It will be something ordinary and unexpected.  I'm sure Mom was as surprised by the popularity of the mandarin orange dessert as I was with Amy and Ryan.  And so it goes.