Food and Memories

Don't certain foods remind you of certain people? Kolaches remind me of my mother-in-law, because she would always make them around Christmas. Below is a kolache making "lesson" my mother-in-law was giving Lauren and the hubby a handful of years ago.

While looking through some old pictures recently, I stumbled across this picture from Christmas of 1988.  This was my grandmother and I horsing around with the turkey.  We had nicknamed the turkey, "Fred."  I can't remember why we named the turkey, maybe because it was the size of a toddler!!!!

I have talked about my grandmother before, she was a really special person to me and a lot of other people.  She lived on her own into her 90's and then went into assisted living.  She passed away in 2004 at 101, the year Dominic was born.  I still use her metal mixing bowl whenever I bake, which is often  :) Food and memories just seem to go hand in hand.  My father-in-law was a great cook.  He made the absolute best pork chops.  He told me the "secret" to making them one time and I really wish I would have wrote it down.  One year for Christmas, my in-law's bought us a turkey roaster, which we still use whenever we make a turkey for Thanksgiving or Christmas.  When the in-law's would visit, I would always make french toast for my father-in-law.  To this day, whenever I make french toast, I almost always think of "Pop-Pop."

 

The picture above is still one of my all-time  favorites of my father-in-law.  Of course it involves food!! This was his birthday and we had made him a cake. Lauren was so little, she was standing on the dining room table.  This morning, since my stepson is visiting us this weekend, I made my mother-in-law's sour cream kuchen.

 
I think when you no longer have those special people in your life, when you make the foods that were their favorite or foods they would make for you, it kind of keeps a part of them with you :)