I saw “The Hundred Foot Journey” last week (lovely, slow in a purposeful way, thinking I should redo my entire wardrobe to look more like a young, French chef on my day off, riding a bike through a village), and I learned a new phrase about cooking, “Food is memories”. Of course it is. I suppose I’ve said it one hundred times on my own one hundred foot journey. But it gave me pause.

Food is memories. Eating certain foods will unlock parts of your brain, and it will also share its own story, so listen to your food. Taste closely. Now closer still. Pay attention to the messages being shared.

Over Labor Day Weekend, we visited my summer childhood home in Southern Illinois. I decided to bring back as much as I could carry, so I could prepare it myself…and listen.

One bite in, and there it was: the apple wood smoked pork loin was different; I’d even say much different than the Indiana pork to which I am accustomed. The smoke was deeper, more pungent. I topped it with a very spicy apple salsa…again…spicy, not sweet, which I usually make. I was zipped back in time to my Aunt Susie’s dinner table, my cousin Brian across from me, and Uncle Goober next to him, the hot August sun setting behind their yard we so affectionately called, “5 Acres”. Everyone was tired from working hard on the farm and at the grain elevator. I could even smell the grain on Goob’s shirt, and hear the hogs in their pens, contentedly grunting after an evening meal.  There was no mistaking the detail in every bite.

The green beans were sweeter than Indiana beans, which I had not anticipated. Corn is sweet in Indiana, but green beans are not. Ours are just a bit crunchier, which I thought I preferred, until I ate these. These were just right. I could taste the earth that grew them, and it felt more coarse, but less full of clay. I guess you could say the St. Louis beans had far less of a metallic taste, and bordered on a smoothness I found surprising, contrasted against the profound presence of the smell and flavor of the dirt. It’s hard to describe how I could taste the dirt, but I could. It rounded out in the back of my nose and throat, and I could almost feel my bare feet running through the summer fields after the rain. I could SMELL it, even more than I could taste it.

I took my first bite of corn and black beans, again, anticipating the wrong flavor. You could try 10 ears of corn and pick out Indiana corn every single time. It’s like eating yellow sugar. It jumps right off your tongue. Illinois corn is mellow, and it’s subtlety lets you know you’re headed west, where the sun is hotter, and the soil is different. Mixed with beans, tomatoes, and cilantro, it wasn’t the least bit unpleasant. But I looked at Greg (who had devoured the rest of the meal), and we both put down our bowls, unable to finish it. It’s hard not to prefer Indiana tomatoes and corn. They are the brightest flavors we grow.

Mild corn brought back memories of my sister and my cousins, heading off in the early morning to detassel. Detasseling is a very physically demanding job, and it was an unstated understanding that I simply didn’t have the stamina or heat tolerance. On the bell curve of cousins, I knew I fell far into the left edge of the curve. On those summer weeks when my compadres worked from sun up to sun down, making their untold fortune by chopping the tops off of corn, I felt left behind. I read my books, and sat in the shade, anxiously awaiting their return so I could hear stories about mean girls who wouldn’t share the water, and the endlessness of corn fields. I tried to imagine myself in the long, hot shirts and jeans, walking the rows…but I couldn’t. I knew I’d never make it to the first water break.

The tomatoes reminded me of my Mother, planting off the back of a tractor, earning extra money for my school clothes. My sister and I sometimes followed along, trying to walk gingerly between the newly planted rows. Sometimes we just waited at the edge of the fields, watching the slow pull of the row of seats, full of women, planting crops. Those evenings in the fields felt exceptionally lonely, and in hindsight, I wish I’d had the wisdom to suggest I’d prefer not to have the fancy, new clothes. But I was a child, unable to put words to the sadness of the adults around me. The tomato harvest would come, and my Mother and Grandmother would slice them, sprinkle them with salt, and eat tomatoes as snacks. They’d eat tomatoes until their mouths had sores, swearing it was worth it. I don’t know why this particular food memory makes me curl inside, but it does. Just the phrase, “sliced tomatoes” makes me cringe. Even now, I hesitate every time I buy a Big Boy, thinking maybe I’d prefer a Roma instead.

But those are memories, and I’ve said too much. This one dinner plate unlocked years of memories, as only food can do.

I brought back as much produce and goodness as Greg and the girls had patience for me to buy. A black diamond watermelon, blackberry cider, Honeycrisp apples (they are in season…RUN! Get them now!), peach salsa, fig preserves, apricot butter, sweet beef sticks, apple coffee cake, and the dinner I shared with you here. Most of it is gone already, as 2 young ladies with terrible head colds stood at my feet, begging for just one more glass of blackberry cider. It’s full of Vitamin C! What was I to do? I was to join them, that’s what I was to do.

Please tell. What foods bring back detailed memories for you?