What is your fondest food memory?

When I was a kid, my brother and sisters and I used to walk a couple of miles to the Willard Park swimming pool on hot summer days We swam and splashed and dived and wore ourselves out. Then, we walked the two miles home. When we got home, we were very tired and very hungry. Mother always had a big pot of delicious buttery potato soup waiting for us. We could count on it. She never failed.

Even now, when I get out of a swimming pool, I want potato soup.

There are actually quite a few, but the one that seems to come up most often is:

I was in college a few hundred miles from home. I came home for Thanksgiving after not having seen my family for quite some time. On Thanksgiving morning I remember waking up to the smell of coffee perculating, giblets simmering on the stove, and onion and celery sauteeing in 2 cubes of butter! Mom had made her cornbread the night before and you could still smell the spices that were in the homemade pumpkin pies she'd finished earlier. When I walked into the kitchen, I was met with a flood of mouthwatering smells and a cup of coffee. I loved watching how effortlessly m, y mom seemed to "throw things together" when she cooked. I always got to sample the stuffing before it went into the bird "just to make sure it has enough salt" lol. Years later, when I made my own Thanksgiving dinners, my mom and I would talk on the phone during the stuffing making process. I always asked her advice, even though I knew how to make everything already, and it ultimately was one of my most prescious memories and one I think of during this time of year.

That's a tough one to sort.

Just the best tasting was the food my sitter used to prepare for me when I was a kid and mom and dad wanted to spend the night out. Southern style pan fried chicken, turnip greens, fried okra and her signature chocolate "ice box" pie with pecans. I remember that there was a lot of pepper in the breading she made.

I got one of the very highest grades on a paper from an uncle, whom I blamed for showing me that the microwave oven was the downfall of man kind. He offered me a gourmet baked potato for dinner, washed and threw a spud into the microwave and nuked it for ten minutes. Add some sour cream, cheddar cheese, and bacon bits. Wild onion at your own risk.

Microwave popcorn with my mother as we watched old B movies on late night TV. What made it humorous was my father and his thrifty ways. Between coupon clipping and bargain shopping, it was six or seven years before I could visit them without having my mother foist more popcorn than anyone could eat on me before I left. I took to stacking it outside my dorm, or apartment door, with a sign announcing free popcorn. I was the darling of every stoner that lived within a thousand feet of me.

A sweet woman who paid a friend and I for work on her rental property with a particularly good feast. New Zealand lamb with mint jelly, roast parsnips and new potatoes. She passed away a few months later, but it's a memory I'll always recall.

D

I have more than a few, but having Sunday roast with my Mum and Dad was always something to look forward to as a kid.

The train birthday cake made from the Womens Weekly Cookbooks Birthday Cake Book.

I was 7 years old it was fantastic!

Sunday roast dinners were memorable BUT... my mom made this to-die-for made from scratch spaghetti sauce that smelled so good the neighbors would say they could smell it from their homes. MMMM... got me a hankerin' now....

Sunday's roast dinners with my parents.