Do you have an abiding food memory?

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27 Jul 2007
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My earliest and strongest food memory is making rhubarb crumble with my Nan in her flat down the road. She had a honking great rhubarb plant/bush thing at the end of her garden and every summer we'd cut the stalks off a couple of times and make dirty great crumbles. I love the smell and taste and it reminds me of her now every time I have it. She died when I was 11, so this must have been when I was 5 or 6.

I also remember her cooking tongues in a big boil pot to feed the dog with and I can't stand to even look at them even now. Also I remember her making home made brawn (spelling?) from half a pigs head. Smelt vile as it was boiling but fantastic once made into the terrines.

Do you have any?
 
Earliest memories:

Swapping fruit pastilles for giant egg rolls made by the lovely ladies on the egg roll stand in the Ocean Terminal, being a little blonde kid in Hong Kong helped with the bargain I'm sure.

Me and my Dad scoffing all of the pickled shallots in the jar at Jimmys Kitchen between us every time we went. These were both around the same time when I would have been about 5.
 
Flapjacks sold in primary school (~10 years ago! :o) which were like 20p. Tasted so good from what I remember (probably just full of sugar!) but my mum (plus others who followed suit) got them banned when they complained to the school about it being bad for the kids, etc. :(

Another one, a bit later on, when we had LOADS of apples (apple tree in the garden), and my mum made so so so much apple cake/crumble and I was actually sick (not literally) of it. We must have had constant apple cake/crumble for a good 2 months!
 
Home made ginger biscuit mixture (and resultant biccies), made when I was 2 or 3 with Olive Mary Smith who lived over the road and looked after me when I was little. In her old farmhouse kitchen, with the mousetrap in the pantry... usually sprung with dead mouse in it.

Can still pseudo taste it. Not just any ginger biscuit mix, but hers.
 
Prawns. I was an odd kid. We used to have this fish van come round once a week in the late seventies and I got the taste for them. All the other kids wanted sweets, but I would wait for hours for the fish van to come round so I could buy a 20p pot of cooked cold prawns. I used to hide in the bush and eat them. Still love them.
 
Heh, that reminds me - we used to have a bloke in an estate car who would drive round on a Sunday afternoon and play a tune like an ice cream van. In the back he would have big ice boxes full of shell fish. We used to have pints of prawns, cockles and all sorts. If we were having a treat we would get a crab and sit and eat it at the kitchen table with a hammer and nut crackers at the ready :)
 
One of my earliest memories was these :

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A treat on a Wednesday while visiting my Grandad. :)
 
Got a couple which are totally unrelated. I remember totally overcooked beef on a Sunday round at my grandad's and they used to carve the meat with an electric carving knife. I remember my mum's stuffed breast of lamb for some reason and my dad's beef stew cooked in the pressure cooker. I've continued the legacy of the beef stew by buying a giant Prestige pressure cooker and continuing to cook it myself.
 
I remember totally overcooked beef on a Sunday round at my grandad's and they used to carve the meat with an electric carving knife.

The only time I've seen an electric carving knife it at my grandparents' when we visit each Christmas; definitely an abiding food memory for me too.
 
Making bread with my granddad. He was my absolute favourite person in the world and I used to love helping him make bread. His always used to rise better than mine though :) I miss him a lot.
 
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