Food acts like a bookmark in time, allowing memories to be fastened into the mind and preserved in a senses until like any other way. On the cooking subreddit r/Cooking, one user asked others about their fondest cooking memories, and peoples’ responses showed just how powerful food can be.
The Gift Of Homemade
“I married a man whose mother never cooked a meal in her life. He ate cereal for breakfast, school lunches, and dinners were always at some cheap restaurant. No home cooked meals, EVER. Sandwiches were her max effort.
When we started dating, we were both kind of broke, so I asked him to come to my place for dinner. It wasn’t anything fancy. Just spaghetti with a meat sauce (tried and true Mom’s sauce), a green salad, and some garlic bread. I made a Boston Cream Pie for dessert. No biggie and lots of leftovers.
He showed up just as I was starting to boil the spaghetti, and he was just stunned. Totally and completely gobsmacked. He thought we were going to order pizza or something. To say he loved it was an understatement. It was such a euphoric joy. This simple thing was SO important to him.
We were married for 25 years (I’m a widow), and his appreciation for the act of my cooking for him never wavered, but that first dinner lives in my heart forever.” Via: ConvivialKat/r/Cooking
Sunday Specials
“Growing up in an Italian family where my old school grandparents cooked everything from scratch and spent all day doing it. Sunday Gravy in the kitchen with my grandma. Started at 8am and coddled until dinner. I was in charge of stirring when I was younger than making it every Sunday going on 23 years.” Via: Pogs4Frogs/r/Cooking
Recreating
“I prepared meatballs using my best friend’s grandmother’s recipe without telling him. He took a bite and got teary-eyed.” Via: STLCityAmy/r/Cooking
A Christmas Gift
“One Christmas when my brother and I were in our mid-20s, both of my parents were out with the flu. Mom was trying to muster to cook the roast while Dad was feebly insisting he could peel apples for pie. Both my brother and I firmly plopped them on the couch, put blankets on them, gave them tea and meds, and insisted we had it handled. We cooked a lovely meal and did all of the cleanup. Everything turned out great. My parents said it was one of the best gifts we could’ve given them!” Via: DerivativeMonster/r/Cooking
Surprise Mistakes
“I was once making Mac and Cheese from scratch as a kid and mixed up tsp and Tbsp when adding cayenne pepper… I learned three things that day:
I love spicy food.
The rest of my family certainly does not
Cooking leads to all sorts of happy little accidents, which is what makes it fun” Via: deleted/r/Cooking
Long Lasting Love
“As a teenager, I cooked a simple stir-fry for my girlfriend. I was just starting to learn what I was doing.
It must’ve gone well, since we’ve been married for over 30 years now. And she keeps saying that if anything happens to me, she’ll have to marry someone else who cooks.” Via: Add_8_Years/r/Cooking
Baking Disasters
“My grandmother and I made this God awful cake out of Good Housekeeping magazine that called for molasses as an ingredient. It was a cake shaped like a rabbit and covered with white icing and coconut and had a cute gumdrop nose! I don’t know what we did wrong or if it just wasn’t our kind of cake, but IT WAS DISGUSTING. She was often hypercritical of me in general, but that was a fun day and the results were so hilarious watching everyone try to be polite and eat it.” Via: DirtyTileFloor/r/Cooking
Unusual Techniques
“Cooking bread with my Nan in Newfoundland. I remember once she slapped me in the face with a piece of the dough and to this day that’s how I know the proper consistency of the bread dough.” Via: cycles_commute/r/Cooking
A Romantic Canned Casserole
“Making a taco-flavored macaroni casserole with my partner. We hadn’t been dating long, and he drove the 3+ hours to visit me while I was in grad school, and I had no idea what to cook. We cobbled together this weird-looking casserole with cans of stuff and spices my old roommate had left behind, and it was DELICIOUS. We had so much fun while making it, too, just laughing the whole time. I think that’s when it hit me that I wanted to marry him.” Via: the-ultimate-salsa/r/Cooking
Home Test Kitchen
“Many years ago my aunt worked for a publishing company that published (among many other magazines & books) Fine Cooking Magazine. Occasionally she’d be tasked with trying a few recipes from cookbooks in the editing stages as she was known to be an excellent home cook.
She was given a copy of “Made in Marseilles” and asked me if I’d like to do a day-long cook-off.
We chose 4 courses. Bought the ingredients along with a few bottles of red wine.
The rest is history. A memorable & fabulous meal was prepared with joy and love. (I recall we did seared scallops with orange salt, sautéed greens, but the rest is a blur).” Via: CocteauTwinn/r/Cooking
Practice Makes Perfect
“When I was young, 13-ish, learning to cook eggs and flipping them using the pan and not a flipper. I went a little too hard and missed the eggs when flipping, they went right into the trash… I still laugh about that when I flip eggs today.” Via: Maastersplinter/r/Cooking
A Matter Of Opinion
“My grandmother had a knack for always saying desserts were too rich, enough that it sort of became a joke in our family. I made a cake for a gathering (my first cake, even) and nervously brought it. Now, she was a woman who would speak her mind no matter who it offended, and I heard her take a bite and tell everyone how good it was and how it wasn’t too rich. My grandpa jokingly asked if I made it from a box, and she said defensively: ‘That is not a box cake.’” Via:tea_bird/r/Cooking
Mistakes Taken With Grace
“I was obsessed with the Food Network in the early 2000s and would make anything as long as we had ingredients. I made a batch of cookies after seeing it on “30 Min Meals”. As an 11-year-old I was pretty cooking literate, but I did my first and only tsp/Tbsp mix that day with the salt. They were awful, and I had never messed up an entire recipe before. My dad came in and ate almost every cookie- he said they were delicious, and he could taste the love and effort.” Via: We_found_peaches/r/Cooking
Prepping Pies
“My Nana had a café and used to go in at 4am to start making pies from scratch. As a pre-kindergarten child, I would arrive later in the morning with my mom. I got to sit with Nana and watch her, and she always saved the pie crust scraps to roll out and let me add cinnamon and sugar and bake as a treat.” Via:guffawandchortle/r/Cooking
Saturday Morning Standard
“My dad teaching me how to make pancakes. He worked like 3 jobs when I was growing up, but whenever he had a moment of free time, he spent it with me. I didn’t get a ton of time with him as a kid, but the time I did get we spent a lot of it cooking or him teaching me how to cook, so I could take care of myself if he had to work. It’s one of the reasons I love to cook now because it reminds me of those happy memories.” Via: Valhkyrie/r/Cooking