Selling Sno-Cones at the Beach

proust's madeleines

I've heard numerous references to Proust's madeleines this term, as a pointer to various kinds of memories. I've always wanted to read "Recherches.." but have never quite got up the energy. Maybe this summer? - Walter Benjamin was quite enamoured of his work, it appears.

For me, madeleines are cream cheese and olive dip. I had a hankering for some this spring, don't know why, and bought some cream cheese some weeks ago (so as not to gross you out I won't say HOW MANY weeks!) and finally, yesterday, made the dip. (Then I forgot to make a sandwich of it to bring to school today, but that's a different story.)

One bite of this dip on a cracker, and I'm back in my grandmother's kitchen, sitting on a cane-bottomed ladderback chair, having "coffee break," which my father had with my grandmother twice a day all the years she lived there, so about 1945 to 1974 or thereabouts. She'd set out the coffee for my dad and her, and always a plate of crackers and cheese or dip, and milk for whatever grandchild might be trailing along behind my dad. I still have one of the glasses from that set - a little juice glass, purple, with sort of a scumbled, mottled pattern. They'd talk, and I'd eat, as much as I wanted.

My grandmothers were both really cool about food in ways that were special and unusual to us as children. "Oh, have another cracker!" "That doughnut won't be any good tomorrow!" My mother had budgets to meet, so six people meant six chicken thighs. We never went hungry, but there was never a sense that you could eat freely as much as you wanted - the food was all allocated before it ever was set on the table - and if you indulged and had a little extra, that meant someone else would have less.

Now I eat whatever and whenever I want, and it feels like a guilty pleasure if it's not healthy and not at a mealtime. Mom wasn't big on snacks, so my sibs and I evolved certain Euell Gibbons-like practices for foraging through the neighborhood. I can still take a walk through the semi-surburban wilderness and tell you what's good to eat. Maybe this is where my great fondness for native plant communities comes from!

Think about it: what food takes you back in time?

Tomorrow: six degrees of separation.

Posted by otto0114 at May 10, 2004 08:26 PM