Bite-Sized Memories

The University of Alabama's 2024 Creative Writing Contest Finalist for Creative Non-Fiction.

__________________________________________________________________________________

As time changes our food evolves with us. Or I should say, we change the food. Either way, our palates and appetites grow past the select foods we were accustomed to eating when we were seven and only wanted mac and cheese or chicken nuggets. Food becomes a journey of exploration full of trial and error as we define what we like and what we hate. With that journey comes memories tied to those foods, whether we like it or not. My memories of both the act of making food and the experiences attached to food carry a special place in my heart. It transports me back to simpler times and to a time when calories didn’t make me cringe.

Laughter fills the small kitchenette as my dad and I stand side by side, both of us puzzle-piecing the toppings on our pizza dough canvas before us. I like black olives, he likes onions. My eyes are level with the pan, and it makes the perfect height for sneaking toppings into my mouth, or so I think. I giggle as he catches me sneaking yet another black olive in my mouth instead of onto the pizza. He smiles and shakes his head as he sprinkles the cheese over the dough canvas before sending it to the oven for baking. From the moment we put our pizza art in the oven, I knew it would taste magical.

There is something so comforting about the favorite meal a family member makes. It sticks to your ribs throughout life and always brings a smile once you have it again.

My grandmother made the best desserts, treats, and snacks for any occasion. Since she passed, her recipes have lived on with me, continuing the treat train for generations to follow. The recipes to some would appear as basic or ordinary but, in her hands, she made them extraordinary in the way that grandmothers do. I will never forget the look on some of my shipmates' faces when they finally tried her lemon bars when we were out to sea. I dreamily talked about them for months, as one does when they are deeply homesick. They assumed it was a bluff until that first bite transported their tastebuds straight into the heart of a southern grandma’s kitchen.

The memory of eating the granola cereal in Navy boot camp for the first time, and every day after, had me convinced it descended from the heavens. It was the shining star among raisin bran and bland Cheerios. Any time I have it now reminds me of the way the cafeteria smelled – like home. In one line there was fresh fruit, and another had a cook grilling sausage and bacon. This took me home to my mom’s on the weekends where she would make a huge breakfast buffet for us.

Before I knew it, I was finishing boot camp and sent to my first command where the food matched its people. There were good days, bad days, and days not for human consumption, labeled clearly on certain cans within the food storage room.

Food took a different meaning and memory there. Eating was purely for sustenance instead of flavor, much like the days of work that blurred together. Some days were memorable because of fun activities on board like game nights or movie nights accompanied by the delicacies of chicken cordon bleu, which we affectionately nicknamed hamsters. Everyone has a morbid sense of humor and well...they did look like they came out of a nine-year-old’s pet habitat. Most days were bland and uneventful like the food served in the galley. Routine schedules of the same workdays and same meals make for a lackluster memory attached.

Camaraderie rooted in unity against a common enemy — ship food. While standing in long lines at breakfast for freshly cooked eggs (instead of the ready-made bagged yellow mix impersonating them) we often would chit-chat about various things. These ranged from all the things we plan to do when we make it to port, the cravings for certain foods that are miles out of reach, and even sharing family recipes and wishing to try each other’s favorites.

Certain meals came to mean certain things. Where foods like steak and lobster would typically make anyone’s mouth water, it instead flipped most of my and my fellow shipmates’ stomachs. If there is just steak, we were wary. That could simply be steak, or it could mean working through the weekend. Couple steak with lobster and there was trouble brewing. We could be going on an underway during a holiday that we previously believed we wouldn’t miss. If the unfortunate crew happens to have both steak and lobster on the same night, followed by an ice cream social, kiss the remainder of your free time goodbye.

With those lukewarm delicacies came long working hours, underway extensions, or deployment extensions. The microwave meals received in survival care packages sent from those beloved family members meant you didn’t have to play the guessing game: is this soggy hoagie just finally thawed out or has it been here for days?

The ship food wasn’t always bad, but it was rarely good. It’s hard to expect good food when feeding five thousand people from various backgrounds while you have limited options. So, survival became the name of the food game. Trafficking packaged PB&J sandwiches became something akin to trading cigarettes in prison. People would barter microwave noodles in exchange for someone covering their work duties that evening. Some took a different approach by emptying their storage locker onboard before deploying and bringing six months’ worth of noodles, snacks, and various other non-perishables to abstain from eating ship food for as long as possible.

Morale was low from time to time when it came to food, but at the end of the day, we still ate and survived with only a mild number of incidents of bathroom casualties under our belt. However, the true excitement came when we arrived at a new place. When we arrived in Singapore, my horizon of food experiences expanded into a new world of flavors. There was a slight catastrophe involving durian cleverly disguised as ice cream. The mere mention of durian takes me back to the moment I took a massive bite and immediately searched for the nearest trashcan.

The redeeming memory from Singapore was the first time I had what I consider to be authentic ramen. Where I grew up, ramen was the microwave pack that took three minutes and only consisted of noodles and seasoning overloaded with sodium. Singapore opened my eyes to the real deal. The soft-boiled egg, rich broth, meat, and toppings sent me to the moon. From that moment I knew there was no going back to my childhood days of making ramen, or so I thought. The memories regarding food during my time in the Navy are split. Some adventures happened out to sea, but most happened while in port at our station in San Diego. Since the only options were to eat microwave meals, ship food, or eating out somewhere in town—the choice was obvious. Thus, every weekend became an adventure in the pursuit of good food.

The culture of food is something amazing. It is a doorway to other cultures, other homes, and other experiences entirely. One day at my job, a coworker mentioned a craving for a specific cocina that made chilaquiles. This dish was completely and utterly unknown to me, which immediately made me want to try it. My boss then asked if we wanted to order and split it. I had no idea what to expect but decided to say yes, even though the risk of my previous durian catastrophe loomed in my mind. Thankfully this time there was no mad dash to a trashcan. I still dream of the chilaquiles from Cocina 35 even now that I am two thousand miles away.

It wasn’t just the food though; it was the mood and the memory attached to it. I looked forward to the days when we would have our mid-day break and split chilaquiles amongst each other. I enjoyed both the food and the camaraderie, reminiscent of the times on the ship years prior when we would bond over food—just in a more positive manner than complaining about green steaks and cold vegetables.

Food breaks down barriers between people because no one can resist something tasty. A delicious meal builds relationships between unlikely people who have very little in common. From something as simple as sharing chilaquiles in the office, a bond formed between a coworker and me. We kept in touch long after she blessed me with her mother’s heavenly homemade pozole. There were times when I missed home and the meals that I couldn’t get anywhere in San Diego for a long time.

The great expedition of 2016 was a mission to satisfy one of those homebrewed staple cravings— Cajun boiled peanuts. In Alabama, they are sold in almost every gas station and on the shelves at grocery stores. In California, they were nonexistent, for the first five years when I then began to see them in stores. I like to think I was responsible for that small feat, considering the interrogations I conducted with every store associate I could find for a year straight.

I also learned the hard way that sweet tea was specific to the South. I learned that unfortunate truth when my shipmate and I went to a barbecue spot in California. As Alabama natives, our hopes were high as we went to eat foods that we hoped would take us home. we were giddy with anticipation when we saw “Tea” on the menu. Our excitement evaporated when they brought us unsweet tea and the sugar canister. He was stubborn and determined enough to mix sugar into his ice-cold unsweet tea to drink it for a small reminder of home, and lied through his sugar-grainy teeth that it was good. While he was determined to have his grainy not-so-sweet tea abomination, I instead requested water. At that moment, I decided to wait until I was in the homeland again to enjoy all the southern delicacies of sweet tea, biscuits and gravy, waffle house, and of course—Cajun boiled peanuts.

While home for the holidays, food is central to the festivities in my family. Every family’s spread is different which makes them unique and wholesome. My family gatherings around the holidays wouldn’t be complete without my Sister in law’s deviled eggs, my brother’s latest and greatest smoked meats, my grandma’s broccoli rice casserole, my mother’s generational dressing (what some would wrongly call stuffing), or my baked macaroni and cheese. There may be some additions, but those are the staple dishes that will go into perpetuity. Both our wallets and our waistbands demand restraint from cooking our holiday meals more than a few times a year. These gatherings are centered around the food for those special reserved dishes, each person putting their efforts into making a piece of the tradition to carry on as our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did.

Outside of the holidays, the day-to-day meals are something that ranges from simple to adventurous. My family struggled when I was younger so food was often budgeted or quick recipes that would feed us for a sickening number of days.

(I still do not like spaghetti.)

Overall, there are small ingenious things that take me back to my childhood. One of those nifty little treats that are so blindingly simple (but satisfying each time) is saltine crackers and marshmallows toasted in the oven. My mother would pop some saltine crackers on a tray, put a small group of mini marshmallows on each cracker, and broil them in the oven until bubbly and brown. While many will see this and think, “Wow, that’s a snack?” I urge you to try it before you disregard its simplicity. The salty crisp cracker with the sweet gooey marshmallows never fails to zap me back to the couch with my mom while she watches whatever dateline episode is on.

On the flip side of her cooking talents, My mom’s “White Chili” (named after its color for being a creamy chicken and bean chili) completed with spices and herbs was a “splurge” meal because it cost more to make it due to the number of ingredients. Now that I am in her shoes as the person in charge of cooking meals for the family, I can see why it didn’t happen more often. Because of that, I am much more appreciative of her ability to pull together a meal that satisfies but doesn’t break the bank, such as her cheeseburger casserole, or her pork chops and mashed potatoes and cornbread.

For clarification, in our household healthy meant expensive.

When my daughter was five her kindergarten teacher asked every student, “What is one meal your parents make that is your favorite, and how do they make it?”. My daughter proudly wrote, “I love my mom’s homemade lasagna, she makes it in the microwave,” in her five-year-old misspelled handwriting. One of the many reasons this is a favorite memory is because she confused oven with microwave (she didn’t know the difference then), and secondly, because my secret recipe was actually Stouffer’s—but don’t tell her that.

Expectations of food vary from person to person, but I feel that children have both high and low expectations at the same time. Food needs to be consistent in taste, texture, and smell, but it doesn’t need to be extremely fancy and loaded with high-quality ingredients each time. This instance is still present now, as she is older and still adamantly loves lasagna, but with an upgrade of homemade garlic bread she makes with me.

My daughter will still get to know my grandmother through her food—likely the chocolate delight and her banana pudding— and she will someday make recipes for her children. Someday she will venture out of her comfort zone of pizza, ham sandwiches, and meatloaf as I did when I branched away from macaroni and cheese and pizza rolls. She will burn meals on accident, find creative alternatives, and discover new recipes to then pass on to her children. The idea that someday her memories will be filled with making lasagna and garlic bread with me in the kitchen the same way I made pizzas with my dad warms my heart.

Food should be memorable; not just in the way it tastes, but in the way it fits into your life. Find friends to get late-night Chinese food with, try foods you’ve never heard of, cook the family recipes handed down through generations, and commemorate your life experiences with meals. The memories of your first time eating a new food that you immediately loved, and yes—even the memories of those you immediately hated. Each time you try something new, you gain something valuable in the process. What we eat follows us in various ways over our lives, but the memories live on forever within us. Food changes us as much as we change food.