Do You Remember that Meal?

I know what you’re thinking “That really doesn’t look like the most exciting of meals” but the reason I decided to put up this picture is not because this was the greatest hotdog I have ever eaten but because of the reason why I ate this hotdog. As is not obvious from the picture I was at the time in New York, a city which has many varied delights to offer anyone interested in food. As later posts will hopefully reflect I did not spend my entire trip eating junk food but there was the odd meal or snack which I had to have for less gastronomic and more sentimental reasons. And this is where the hotdog comes in. As someone who watches more television than is really good for her and who has a penchant for American sitcoms set in New York a Gray’s Papaya/Papaya King hotdog has become something of an obsession of mine. I could list at least three television instances in which they feature but I appreciate that that would not make the most interesting of reads. However thinking about how personal and sentimental reasons cause most people to occasionally indulge in foods they would not normally consume made me consider how particular foods or meals take on a life of their own in our memories and imagination.

For me perhaps two foods stick out for their nostalgia value. The first is not a particular food but a meal. A very English pub snack called a Ploughman’s Lunch made up of bread, butter, cheddar cheese, pickle and salad. I know it sounds as if it is an unmade sandwich and that is basically what it is but every summer for about three years of my life I ate this every Saturday at the pub my father went (and still goes) to in rural Hampshire. I can not remember if the bread was of particular note or if the cheese had any great pungency (I doubt it as I was around six at the time) but I do remember looking forward to both the meal and the accompanying fun that was to be had on the pub’s play-frame for at least two or three hours (as I said I was only six) before we left to go to the pub. And really the meal and the play-frame are inextricably linked as I made up a complicated and extensive circuit based around the play-frame and the surrounding trees which I had to complete in ever faster times in order to get back to the relative safety of my father and my Ploughman’s. I have a feeling my father was oblivious to the convoluted reasoning behind the timing of my playing and eating but, as is often the case, to me at the time it made perfect sense and I doubt my attachment to either cheese Ploughman’s or the play-frame would be as strong without the other.

The second is a Trinidadian snack food called “doubles”. It's made up of two palm-sized pieces of fried dough, called bara, sandwiched with a spicy chickpea filling, called chana. When I was around nine years old I was taken on a family holiday to Trinidad, where my mother is from, and it is from this holiday that my memories of doubles emanate. Doubles are eaten for breakfast in Trinidad and I have a clear memory of one morning walking into the kitchen in my grandparents’ house to find that the rest of my family were already up and dressed. My aunt had been out to the doubles seller and there were empty, oil speckled, wax paper wrappers and brown paper bags littered all over the table. With the lack of self-consciousness that comes from being nine years old I proceeded straight to the table, found a couple of doubles and then started the morning ritual which I performed daily on that holiday. This consisted of gently separating the two bara, scraping out the chana and then putting the bara back together and finally eating this now chana-less double to the amusement of both my immediate and extended family. The memory of the greasy, salty, fluffy dough spiked with the odd taste of chana where I hadn’t fully removed the unctuous sauce reminds me of Trinidad as much as a steel band or picturing the inside of my grandmother’s shop ever could. Even now I am often tempted to remove the chana when I eat doubles but there are really some things you can only get away with when you’re a child and, in all honesty, it is better with the chana.

So this picture really hasn’t been the focus of much attention in this post. Perhaps its relevance comes in in that it now represents a new set of memories inextricably linked to my food experiences. As hotdogs go it was good and the chips (or fries) were suitably crunchy and very fresh. It certainly makes an acceptable snack if you’re on the run in New York but for me this picture and my sensory recollection of it will rekindle memories, both of food and of other things, that defined my trip to New York. It is arguably this ability to make aspects of life unique and peculiarly personal that makes food such a potent carrier of memories.