Food

  Food-I like to start writing my blog on Saturday morning so I don't have
so much to write on Tuesday. This time, though, Friday afternoon came and I
still didn't have a clue what to write about. I certainly wasn't stressed
out about it but I did tell God that it would be nice to know a little ahead
of time. The thought that came to me was "Food". My thought, "No way. I have
nothing to say about food". I am still not totally convinced that I should
be writing about food but, as I don't want to risk disobeying God, I will
scribble down a few things. So please bear with me.

Some time ago, I wrote in my blog that all I had left my pre-stroke life,
except for my kids, are my memories. But, like a lot of people who are
getting older, my childhood memories are the strongest. The same with food
memories. I can still taste some of the things that my mother made but that
I eaten since I was a child. One was something called Kooga. I have no idea
how to spell it but it was some kind of German coffee cake. My mother never
made macaroni and cheese. Instead, we always got macaroni and tomatoes. We
didn't have a lot of money so I remember things like sardines on toast and
fried bologna. Like most children I remember best the sweets. We didn't get
a lot of store-bought candy but Mom would, quite often, make fudge for us
kids. Of course, sometimes it was chocolate but, what I remember most, is
the brown sugar fudge. Something I haven't had in years. Other times, Mom
would give us each a cup, fill it with stuff she used for baking (chocolate
chips, raisins, coconut, walnuts, etc ) and let us pick away. Then there
were the molasses cookies. I can still remember coming home from school to
find the table covered with soft molasses cookies.  Oh, the birthday cakes.
Of course,  Mom would make them herself. Layer cakes. But, before she put
the layers together and iced it, she stuck trinkets in the bottom layer so
that, when we had a piece of cake we also got a trinket.

One food memory I have is when I was a teen living in Medicine Hat. At the
Woolworth store, they had a with the most incredible bananas rolls. Looked
like a jelly roll but was like bananas bread rolled up with banana cream
frosting. It was so good!

My food memory from after I was married was that, if we had leftover turkey,
my husband would put it in a white sauce and we would eat it on toast. Yum!

Since the stroke, though, it has been hospital food, hospital food and more hospital food! When they first started to give me food, it was pretty gross as I had to eat pureed food, very much like baby food. Now, though, I can eat most things as long as it is cut small and not to hard. Most of the food served in Long-term Care is not bad and some it is really quite good. Still, I jump at any opportunity I get to eat different food.

Thinking about it , I can't think of any food that I utterly loathe. Except green peppers. I can't stand those things! When I was a kid, from time to time, my mother made baked, stuffed green peppers. I wouldn't even stay in the house while they were cooking because of the smell! Of course, there are other things that I prefer not to eat but nothing is as disgusting, to me, as green peppers!

Even though I can eat a lot of things, I do get hungry for things that I can't eat because they are too hard. One is apples. I crave an apple. Another thing I miss eating are nuts of any kind. I miss just eating them by the handful but there is also a lot baking that I can't eat because of the nuts in it. Sometimes, it would just be nice to be able to suck on a hard candy. And so on...

As I was writing this, the thought was that perhaps God had me write about food merely as a test of my obedience. He has been known to do that. Whatever the reason, writing this made me hungry. Most of it, anyway!