December Blogging Meme Topic #6:
What's a food you feel is under-appreciated, and memories associated with it?
-rinue
I'm not sure that they count as under-appreciated, but in the microcosm that is my sphere of influence, mushrooms seem to be. I can hardly remember a time I haven't liked them, and this is mostly because I have a fantastic early memory associated with them. I have intense visual and taste/scent based memory, and my earliest memories go back as far as infancy to toddler-hood. When I was about a year old, my father carried me downstairs in the middle of the night because we were both sleepless. I remember the pitch-black of the living room giving way to the dining-room lit by the tank in which my mom kept about a dozen neon tetras; the kitchen just beyond that was lit by the stove's overhead bulb. My dad opened the refrigerator and took out a box of leftover pizza. He set it over on the counter and, without putting me down, opened it and picked something off one of the pieces of pizza. He asked me if I wanted a taste, and I nodded. He put the thing in my mouth, and I remember the texture of it and the residual taste of cheese and garlic and how great those tastes went with the taste of the thing I was chewing on. It was leftover cheese and mushroom pizza, and that's my favorite kind of pizza to this day. I've also loved mushrooms ever since. I was the weird kid at school who liked mushrooms until some of my peers started to like mushrooms, too.
-rinue
I'm not sure that they count as under-appreciated, but in the microcosm that is my sphere of influence, mushrooms seem to be. I can hardly remember a time I haven't liked them, and this is mostly because I have a fantastic early memory associated with them. I have intense visual and taste/scent based memory, and my earliest memories go back as far as infancy to toddler-hood. When I was about a year old, my father carried me downstairs in the middle of the night because we were both sleepless. I remember the pitch-black of the living room giving way to the dining-room lit by the tank in which my mom kept about a dozen neon tetras; the kitchen just beyond that was lit by the stove's overhead bulb. My dad opened the refrigerator and took out a box of leftover pizza. He set it over on the counter and, without putting me down, opened it and picked something off one of the pieces of pizza. He asked me if I wanted a taste, and I nodded. He put the thing in my mouth, and I remember the texture of it and the residual taste of cheese and garlic and how great those tastes went with the taste of the thing I was chewing on. It was leftover cheese and mushroom pizza, and that's my favorite kind of pizza to this day. I've also loved mushrooms ever since. I was the weird kid at school who liked mushrooms until some of my peers started to like mushrooms, too.