Favorite Childhood Feel-Good Foods

 

I associate specific foods with certain people. All of my comfort foods come matrilineally. 

My Uroma (we’re Austrian on my mother’s side) lived in a communal farmhouse called Kaserermühl along the Mühlbach (mühl means mill.) She was born in 1891. When I stayed with her, she had the baker deliver Salzstangerl for me for breakfast. Uroma made the best broths, clear and rich with flavor.

My Oma and I went to the butcher often because back then you bought your food fresh for the day’s meals. He always had Leberkäse, still warm from the oven between two slices of fresh bread, ready for me for our visits. On really special occasions, we went to the Konditorei in Hallein for a Heiße Liebe (Hot Love), warm raspberry sauce over vanilla ice cream.

My mother bequeathed me Zúckerbrot, bread, butter, and sugar, a combination that is better than any drug to calm and soothe. She gave us Schmandi, eggs, milk, and a little flour cooked in butter and topped with sugar. I have yet to find it on the internets. The closest I have gotten so far is the Kaiserschmarrn, but that’s way more work than our humble fare.

I’ve given my daughter Sick Peoples’ Soup, basically a chicken broth egg drop soup with cream of wheat that I made her the many times she wasn’t feeling well. 

My grandson requests a plain toasted bagel topped with whipped cream cheese and cut into 6ths. According to him, this is perfection.

What do you consider the perfect feel-good food?

and the green grass grew all around

if you could fly

fly high above the trees and 

you could look down

you would see the canopy 

of leaves in hunter emerald 

and lime

hiding the pretty little bird 

sitting a speckled egg 

in a nest

on a branch 

connected to the trunk 

that goes to the roots 

where i buried your body

* * *

i wrote this last night as i was falling asleep

i didn't get up to write it in my notebook

i wanted to see if i would remember it

it's based on a children's song

and the green grass grew all around

that my 82 year old father

has been singing to his

offspring unto the 3rd generation

my father is having difficulty remembering

but he is still able to pass this on

don't forget the G-Man's 55

Flash 55 - If Memory Serves

it’s been a while since I’ve written in double fives

and I find myself breaking out in hives
do I remember how to do it
is it like riding a bike
I have to make my thoughts fit
like a finger in a dike
and say something that doesn’t stink like chives
hoping everyone survives

Write a story in exactly 55 words.

 Hosted by G-Man @ Mr. KnowItAll – Click Here

Merry Meet and Blessed Be

Echoes

The past speaks to me
at times when I least
expect it, when I least
want to hear it, when I am least
able to deal with it.
It has a power far
beyond its value, rattling round
the inside of my head, bouncing
from ear to ear and back again
until I wish I could dash my brains
out on the walls of a padded cell,
the white cushions absorbing
the blood sprays of memories
haunting me.

Write a poem on this week’s theme.

One Single Impression

One Single Impression - Oubliette

Strips of paper with memories written in bold strokes of indelible ink fill a glass jar wrapped in soft pinks and greens and tied with a big, purple bow. As she took one end of the ribbon and pulled, the fun, forgotten moments of the past revealed themselves in bright squeals of laughter and warm, happy tears on soft wrinkled cheeks. Happiness sat upon the minutes of the now while dangling toes dipped into the pools of a fondly remembered past.

 An oubliette is a dungeon; the word comes from the French for "forgotten place." This made me think of the good memories consciously brought back to the surface after rooting past the bad memories I like to hold on to with a death-like grip.

One Single Impression is a weekly post prompt hosted by Sandy Carlson and Andrée.

      

Warm Memory

On a hot, humid day in August, all of the children in a generic Levittown neighborhood ran up and down the street playing kickball. The ball escaped the macadam playing field and rolled into the yard of the angry old man in the brown house.

A caucus ensued to determine if the ball should be retrieved in a hit and run maneuver, complete with distractions and decoys or if a sacrificial lamb should be chosen to ask for the return of the ball.

Before a plan could be agreed upon, grouchy faced grandpa tramped out his front door dressed in his yellowed boxers, black knee high socks and tennis shoes. His shirtless belly hung over the loose elastic waistband of his underpants. His combed over hair lay across his scalp in dark, greasy furrows. He scooped up the ball, yelled something obscene in a drunken slur and weaved back to his house, his butt crack waving good-bye.

The kids sat in a line on the round curb like birds resting on a phone wire. Indignity, outrage and plans for revenge increased the ambient temperature. No one went home. Outside meant freedom from prying parental eyes and tedious chores. They decided to play hide and seek until the nice lady came home and returned their ball.

The hiders hid and the counter counted. Right around fifty-nine, the truck rounded the corner. Squeals and laughter, excited calls and feet pounded pavement energized the air. The diesel pickup shot clouds of thick mosquito killing spray from the tank mounted in its bed. The children ran down the street enveloped in the enchanted brume: fumes breathed deep into lungs, eyes burned, nose hairs singed and skin irritated. They frolicked in the foggy fairyland between Avalon and Glastonbury.

Just Dune It

"Dunes" Island Beach State Park, NJ
Photograph Copyright 2007 by Vanessa V. Kilmer

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits."
– Thomas A. Edison

Last week, as I congratulated myself on completing my errands in record time after work, including a trip to the grocery store, I peacefully approached the street where I live. Unusually, there was little traffic, with the exception of a pickup truck just in front of me and an SUV leaving the parking lot of the new daycare center on the corner.

"Yo, Bubba," I said to myself (yes, that's how I talk in my head,) "there's no way in hell you are making that left hand turn going fifty miles an hour."

I shook my head in disgust as I watched the pickup veer left at an excessive rate of speed.

“Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit…” I eloquently began to chant.

“Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit…”

I watched in amazement as the truck crossed the two southbound lanes, jumped the curb, took out a metal sign and chopped into a wooden electric pole with the passenger side of the truck, continued on the newly turfed grass, drove straight between the daycare sign and the corner stop sign, crossed the street and ran headlong into the side of the church sitting on the far corner of my street.

“Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit…” as I stopped in the road and fumbled for my hazard lights.

“Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit…” as I clumsily dialed 911.

I babbled semi-incoherently to the dispatcher but managed to get out the information about what happened and where. Within seconds, several patrol cars, an ambulance, EMT’s and three fire trucks arrived.

My daughter is an EMT and firefighter in town and takes the pictures at scenes, so when she heard the location, she was concerned. When she arrived, she saw my car in the middle of the road and she came running.

My husband heard the impact of the crash and went to the front yard to see what was up. The neighbors told him there was an accident at the corner and my car was stopped in the middle of the street. He threw his beer can into the driveway (he always has a beer can in his hand, just ask my mother) and came running.

I assured everyone I was ok. I tracked down the proper police person and gave a statement, then asked if I could go home to put my no-longer-frozen vegetables away.

The man (a neighbor from the next street over who went to high school with my daughter) walked away from the accident with minor injures. He smashed his father’s pickup to smithereens. The church has a huge hole in the wall.

I didn’t take any pictures.