I don’t know about y’all but I have this thing about people and food. There are certain foods that, when I eat them, remind me of someone in particular. It could be something they liked to make, it could be something they always had in their refrigerator, it could just be something they like. When I think of the person I think of the food, sometimes even crave the food for myself. When I think of the food, the memories of the person or eating that food with them come flooding back. Is that weird?

A week or two ago, I suddenly found myself wanting some pinto beans. I hadn’t had them in a while, and even though it was summer and 90 plus degrees outside, I wanted pinto beans. So I made pinto beans. Of course you don’t just make pinto beans and eat them once and it’s over. No, you make an entire pot of pinto beans and eat them for days. In fact, they’re much better a day or two in after they’ve sat in the refrigerator for a bit. For a few days in a row, I had pinto beans for dinner and I satisfied that hankering. That same week, I found myself thinking about my dad quite a bit. No surprise there, as he loved to make a huge pot of beans and a batch of cornbread for us. Pinto beans = Dad. He’d casually announce on a weekend morning, “I think I’m going to make some beans and cornbread today.” We knew that meant that we’d be eating beans and cornbread for the next several days, and our mouths would begin to water. My dad made the best beans and cornbread. He’d get the beans to thicken just right, and season them so that you savored every bite. His cornbread was the best. He preferred the buttermilk cornbread as opposed to sweet cornbread, which is my favorite also. I loved a bowl of pinto beans with onion and a big chunk of buttermilk cornbread, still do. When I eat this meal, I always think back to dad’s cooking and talking with him while he did his thing in the kitchen. This got me thinking about the connection between certain foods and certain people and how often I make those connections.

Kabanosy = Ciocia Luta, and Mom. My mama (Babcia) came to visit me a couple of weeks ago. While she was here, we visited a European grocery so that she could pick up some kabanosy. Babcia loves kabanosy. I think for her it brings back memories of good food and good times with family and friends. Kabanosy are flavorful, smaller/thin Polish sausages; they’re great for snacking. Each time I come home to visit, it goes without saying that I am expected to bring her more kabanosy. Kabanosy always makes me think of my mama because it’s a food she loves. For me though, it also brings back memories of being in my Ciocia Luta’s kitchen and dining room. Every time we’d visit her, she’d always have a huge spread, a refrigerator full of food from the Polish deli ready to take out and set up for grazing throughout the day. Ciocia Luta’s house was our home base, and other family members would stop by during the days to visit with us while we were in Chicago. Everyone was (over)fed and if you left that house hungry there was no one to blame but yourself. Kabanosy was a staple, as it was loved by all and Ciocia Luta knew that my mom couldn’t get authentic Polish food in West Virginia. She always made sure the table was full of Polish breads, cakes and cookies, sausages, and deli meats from Joe & Frank’s Polish deli in Oak Lawn. Once in a while we’d stop by Joe & Frank’s before leaving town to pick up some foods to take home, and it was like visiting another country. The deli was always full of Polish people, aisles full of Polish food, displays of trinkets and magazines all in Polish, and a feeling of being immersed in Babcia’s culture. She was in heaven, she was home.

Mac and cheese = my daughter. Like many children, my daughter has always loved macaroni and cheese. As a little girl, it was always her favorite. Most kids like the cheesy noodles, and it’s a quick and easy meal for a busy parent to make so it becomes a regular feature on the menu. You can mix it up by adding in vegetables or meats. That never really went over well with my daughter though, she was a purist. She wanted ONLY the noodles and the cheese. She was an expert at picking out the broccoli or the ham or whatever I had added and piling it into a neat little stack on the side of her plate, leaving it for me to scrape into the garbage after she’d left the table. To this day I have yet to meet anyone who could dissect a meal as meticulously as my own child. She could teach a master class. As we both got older and I began to cook more, I developed my own recipe for homemade mac and cheese based on the Lady’s Mac and Cheese recipe from Paula Deen. That recipe is still her favorite today. As an adult she began to have some issues with dairy and we’ve had to adjust the recipes, but she still loves her mac and cheese. When I want to give her the comfort of home, when I want to wrap my love around her with food, it’s always got to be mama’s mac and cheese.

Here’s an odd one. Kraft Olde English Cheese Spread/Pimiento cheese = my aunt Loretta. As kids, over the summers, our families would get together and go to Beech Fork or Virginia Point to spend the day picnicking and swimming. My cousins and I would play in the water all day, and our parents would sit on the shore talking and enjoying a few beers and eating. Each family brought their own cooler packed with food and drink to share amongst each other. My aunt Loretta’s cooler always included a few pimiento cheese sandwiches, and always included Kraft Olde English cheese spread. Those outings were the first time I’d ever tasted either of those foods, and I loved them both. I loved the tangy pimiento cheese sandwiches, and I loved to the cheese spread on a cracker. I specifically remember sitting on the shore on a blanket with my mom and my aunt Loretta, dripping with water from the lake, eating a cheese sandwich and listening to them talking. I don’t even know if you can still find the cheese spread in the stores any more, I don’t recall seeing it. However every time I eat pimiento cheese, which is rarely these days, I always think of my aunt Loretta and how she always made sure we were all fed, and then sent us back out into the water to play. It was a small way she cared for us kids and it’s stuck with me over the years.

Fresh green beans = my mammaw. My mammaw and pappaw had a garden when I was growing up. They grew many things… potatoes, cabbage, corn, tomatoes, and green beans. Many Sunday were spent at their house over the summers. My family and the families of my cousins would gather there to help out in the garden. The boys would help pappaw on his tractor, working in the garden. The girls would sit in a circle of lawn chairs in the yard under a few small trees, stringing beans and talking. We were helping mammaw to prepare the beans for canning. For me, it was an early lesson in community and the roles of family. We all gathered to be together, we all played a part in helping to get the haul from the garden ready to can for the winter, and we all spent time talking and laughing and just enjoying each other’s company and stories. Before cell phones and texting, before Facebook, this was how we came together and shared things about ourselves and our lives. Many times the day would culminate with mammaw preparing a dinner for us with the foods from their garden, and with the help of my mom and my aunts. There is nothing tastier than fresh vegetables from the garden, and green beans were my favorite. Over the years, I’ve become pretty good at cooking fresh green beans. But I still cannot get them just right, I still can’t get them to taste exactly the way my mammaw made them. Maybe it’s a longing for days gone by. Maybe it was a secret ingredient she used, maybe it was the water they were cooked in (well water). All I know is that my dream is to make a pot of green beans that tastes just like my mammaw’s used to taste. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to recreate that recipe, but I keep trying so I can taste them just one more time.

Our memories take us back to days gone by and people who are no longer here with us. That’s why we treasure them. Sometimes they’re hazy. Sometimes we tend to make the memories better than the actual events were. Memories can be triggered by the most random things. Whether they are good memories or bad memories, we make those connections and they seem to linger in our thoughts for a lifetime. Food is just one way we bring back the people and places that we love and have loved. I know sometimes that when I have a craving for a particular food, it’s not just the food that I crave but the time with the people who made me love that food. So I cook, I taste, and I let the food bring them back to me… if only for a little while. And it’s delicious.