WIAW: Fond Food Memories

• October 9, 2013

WOW. Your feedback on yesterday’s post about body comments was awesome. I’m so glad I’m not alone! It’s a post I’ve been wanting to write for awhile and I’m glad I finally found the words I was waiting for so that I could publish it. Keep your comments comin’! Now onto a fun post…

Kaitlin wrote a great post awhile back on certain foods and what they mean to her or remind her of. I loved the idea and reading her post put tons of material into my head for a post of my own on the same topic! And what better day to share this post than What I Ate Wednesday?

Cinnamon Buns

These have a few different meanings to me, actually. The first involves Christmas morning…every year up until recently, on Christmas morning my mom would make the Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, the ones from the pop-open tubes (I loved opening those!)…and I always chose the one with the most icing! Or ones 😉 these weren’t those fancy Grands cinnamon rolls that look store-made…they were the ones that were blatantly from the tube, but that was fine by me. This was also back in the day before Cinnabon was partnered with Pillsbury for every cinnamon roll product.

Speaking of Cinnabon, another cinnamon bun related memory involves travel. Whenever we went on family vacations, my special airport treat was always my very own giant Cinnabon Classic Roll! I have many memories of sitting on various airplanes, happily eating that wonderful thing. And then I felt pretty yucky for the rest of the flight.

And finally, my mom used to bring my sister, brother, and I to the gym with her many mornings out of the week. We got to play in the Kidzone, but the same one can only occupy me for so long. I started putting up a fuss about being dragged to the gym all the time (my brother and sister were too young to be fussing about that) and my mom started bribing me with Burger King Cini-Minis. Soon I started looking forward to gym days because it meant I’d get BK Cini Minis…before Cinnabon (I smell a cinnamon bun monopoly…mmmm) took over them. I loved the icing, which I recall had so much sugar in it that I could literally feel its texture in the icing. I’ve always been an icing girl! My sister never ate her icing or finished her minis, and I was always happy to polish that off for her. I used to eat the rest of the icing with my finger too, if I didn’t use it all on the Cini Minis. Oh man.

Peanut Butter Sandwiches

I’ve stated in the past that I used to eat a minimum of two crustless white Wonder Bread reduced fat Jif Creamy PB sandwiches per day. That was my way of life until I left for college! But the most distinct memories these sandwiches bring to me involve when I’d eat them for dinner at home in the few years after I saw the movie Hook. I just loved the scene when the Lost Boys taught Peter how to use his imagination to eat a great feast. I was in love with the way they chomped into their food. So, while eating my PB sandwiches (I always had two at a time) at dinner, I’d chomp on it like I was in that movie imagining my dinner. Of course I did not eat them this way when I was eating lunch at school!

Funfetti

In high school one of my best friends Molly lived a few houses down and we would hang out every day after school. Back in the day before I could drive, we’d walk to a nearby supermarket, purchase Funfetti mix/icing, and walk back to her house to make it. That completely justified then eating ridiculous amounts of the resulting cake!

Frosted Flakes

AKA the only cereal I liked as a kiddo. I didn’t have it for breakfast though, I liked it as a snack. My mom tried to pull a fast one on me once and buy the reduced-sugar kind, but they tasted like Corn Flakes and I put a stop to that really quickly.

Whole Milk

I drank buckets of skim milk as a kid and that’s the only kind my mom would buy, so whenever I went out to eat or to a friend’s house, I took advantage and had at least one glass of whole milk. I just loved how creamy it tasted. Sometimes at friends’ houses I’d have several glasses of it and make myself feel so sick! It was always a treat if I was allowed to have more than one glass of it at a restaurant.

Mashed Potatoes + Saltine Crackers

I know, what the heck? Please hear me out. I have said before that I practically lived off of white carbs as a kid. Perhaps this will give you an idea of just how true that is. I used to LOVE my Grannan’s mashed potatoes and whenever my siblings and I would go stay with my grandparents for the night (they lived close when we lived in Florida), Grannan would make those fabulously smooth mashed potatoes. She’d also put a saltine cracker sleeve on the table for my grandpa. I started digging into them as well, and dipping them INTO my mashed potatoes. As in saltines-and-potatoes eaten like chips-and-salsa. Can you say starch party?

What are some foods with which you associate fond memories?

What was your favorite food as a child? How about a high schooler? Any difference between then and now?