On Nostalgia

And how food makes memories.

A few weeks ago, I walked out my back door and down the three flights of stairs leading up to our condo. My neighbor on the second floor was cooking spaghetti sauce, and the smell of the tomatoes hit me so hard I almost had to stop. 

For years, when we gathered at my grandparents’ lake house in the summer, my cousins and siblings and I ate platefuls of spaghetti sauce made with chicken and pepperoni on the steps of their front porch, where it didn’t matter if you spilled red sauce and there were no grown-up eyes to see you slide your salad into the garden. 

Smelling the dinner that my neighbor was cooking took me straight back there, to that place. The same thing happens when I take a sip of Pumpking beer from Southern Tier or have a bite of matzo ball soup (with matzo balls made with chicken schmaltz and matzo mix!): I’m transported. It’s no surprise that food is a vehicle through which I can access and unlock memories—smell and taste play a key part in that due to the way those sense receptors are connected to parts of the brain that process emotion and memory. 

Recently, the house where we ate spaghetti on the porch was sold. It was a difficult but necessary choice, and it has sent me deep into my archival food memories, many of which are anchored in that home, surrounded by family. The food that was cooked in that house was nothing fancy or earth-shattering. Much of it was rooted in what could feed the most mouths with the greatest speed, accounting for picky eaters and seasonal produce but with absolutely no regard for how much heat was generated in the cooking of said foods. 

A one-butt kitchen.

We ate scalloped potatoes and meatloaf, fresh corn on the cob slathered with butter, spaghetti with red sauce, lasagna, jello cake, and pies, and at the end of the night, we finished everything off with fresh chocolate fudge warmed up on the stove and poured over ice cream. Nothing was a part of a theme, nothing was “authentic” except to my family, and everything went together like nothing I’ve ever had before or would dare to pair again. 

The food we ate became the foundation of the memories we made, mostly because everything was focused on the food. My cousins and I used to joke that if our family wasn’t eating, then we were talking about our next meal. Now that I’m older and I understand what a Herculean task it was to rustle up dinners that could feed 13 grandkids and their various appetites, I understand why food was front of mind. But I also think that the way food underlaid every moment of life signifies how much importance it held and holds for us as a marker of our time together, the most precious moments of our lives. 

Coffee goes with hot blueberry muffins and your mug of choice.

Card games go with butter snap pretzels and honey wheat twists. Sitting down on a porch swing in the morning with a cup of coffee makes me feel like I’m missing something unless I have a blueberry muffin. Christmas morning goes with tangy sourdough waffles, salted butter, and maple syrup—the good stuff. Memory is a funny thing. I can’t remember what we gave as gifts or the fights we got into or what movie was playing at the cinema that night. But I can tell you with certainty what the food tasted like and how it smelled without missing a beat.

And once I start thinking about the food, the memories come flooding back and hit me like a spoonful of red pepper flakes, making my eyes get teary and my throat scratch. I get hungry, not for the foods, but for the table we sat at and the people around it, all crammed in together and fighting over who got to sit where before we got down to business and started passing around the plates that made up our edible canon. 

Maybe this is what we mean when we talk about comfort foods: using specific dishes as a way to time travel back to a moment in life, staring down at a plate and appreciating a moment in a way you didn’t the first time you lived it. Like when I make tomato pie (free recipe at the link!) or chocolate mousse or when I eat Whoppers or Tootsie Rolls. That’s the magic of food. Taste and smell and texture blend into time and place and people, and all of the sudden, I’m sitting on the porch with not a care in the world except how fast my hot fudge is making my ice cream melt. 

Coming next week: notes on books and reading. The following week, you’re in for a treat because interviews are back! Paid subscribers will get a recipe for zucchini pickles on Friday! Thanks as always for being here and reading these words. I appreciate you!