At Other People's Kitchen Counters

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A long time ago, a childhood friend commented to me that my house smelled better than hers. She said something about how Asian houses always smelled good when dinner was cooking. At the time, I thought that was a weird comment because I really loved how my Caucasian friends' houses smelled when dinner was on or when someone was baking. The smells I liked best when entering friends' homes: chocolate chip cookies, bread items, pasta sauces, and crock-pot concoctions.

I remember often thinking that my friends' homes had so many bread/pastry/cookie products. I was always shocked whenever I saw multiple loaves of breads, more than two boxes of cereal, danishes/donuts on a large plate, and a cookie jar filled to the brim. I wondered if the family could eat all those items before they spoiled. I doubt my own family could've eaten all that in the course of a week or two. Those weren't our primary food items. But we probably had excess of other food items that to this day don't consciously register with me. But other people certainly noticed a few oddities. For instance, I know one friend of mine looked in our pantry and asked what we did with all the "miniature dead fishies" that were stacked by the thousands in a tall jar. I said, "We...just eat them." She crinkled her nose in disgust. To emphasize the point, I opened the jar and grabbed a few out and crunched them in my mouth. The pungent stench from the jar alone was enough to cause her to back up. She was also horrified that the fish "still had their eyes". ;)

Another friend marveled that our family had "so much rice". She said her mom periodically bought a small box of "Uncle Ben's" rice. (My mom bought at least 20-30 lb. bags of rice in one shot from the Asian market, and now I do that too.)

So those are the only two things I remember someone non-Asian pointing out about our pantry. I'm sure there were plenty more strange items that friends were silent about.

It's always fun to walk into someone's home when you know the mom or dad likes to cook. Several of my friends' moms were like that (not so much the dads in my generation of childhood). I wonder in today's era how many kids even get to wander into friends' homes and how many parents take time to cook from scratch. I wonder what this generation of kids will experience and remember as far as cooking aromas and pantry stashes...hopefully home-cooked meal smells are still part of this generation's memories. Both my husband and I try to cook without processed products. I've had more than one person comment around dinner time that our house "smells so good". And almost all of Bryant's friends who come over to play are curious about "what's cooking in the kitchen". Several boys have even blatantly asked to stay for dinner. I think that's great.

I know I tried all kinds of new food items in friends' homes while growing up. In my generation, that sort of visiting around and snacking at other moms' counters was part of learning how to eat a variety of foods. I doubt I would've gotten such early tastes of the following homemade items without my friends' moms in their kitchens: Italian beef, homemade pie crust, French toast sticks, red velvet cake, pastys, milkshakes, southern BBQ, Texas sheet cake, potato salad, baklava, iced tea, sweet rye bread, corned beef & cabbage, perogies, fudge, baked mac 'n cheese, popcorn balls, maple bars, raspberry jam, Tollhouse pie, zucchini bread, deviled eggs, etc. I know many American people would read that list and say, "Big deal. I tried all that stuff as a kid." But for me, to sit at another mom's counter and watch and then eat WAS a big deal. It was all very different (and exciting) to me. I know some of my Caucasian friends thought that same thing about our house and what my mom was cooking, even if they were afraid to taste certain things. ;)

Do you have any favorite foods or cooking aromas from childhood? At your house or someone else's?

-bm

Posted by at February 29, 2008 10:15 a.m.

Comments

#103170

Posted by Christina Hyun at 2/29/08 10:22 a.m.

BTW, as you can tell, I grew up in a neighborhood that was almost all white. Very few minorities were thrown in.
-bm

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