Food Memories

Jim made creamed chicken the other night. Just cream of celery soup, some chicken, some peas, And some chipotle, because New Mexico. 

Crumbled bacon, the real stuff, fried and drained. The whole mess served over toast. What Jim remembers from the army as shit on a shingle, made with chipped beef. What I remember from my childhood when my mother made it from canned salmon.

It was exactly the same, whether the meat in the whole mess was shredded salmon or chipped beef or chicken. I just about died from the comfort of it.

My mother was a 1950s cook. Lots of things cooked in what came from a soup can, and things that had to simmer and stew for hours before my dad came home from work. Even her meatloaf, which I loved, started with a can of tomato soup.

There was jello. With fruit cocktail in it. Of course there was.

There was always a homemade dessert, tapioca or cupcakes or brownies. or cookies. Always.

Memories of food, along with scents, must be our strongest. And Jim's chipotle chicken toast concoction brought back a real flood. A torrent of food memories for me.

She made her creamed stuff over toast with canned salmon and I have such a clear memory of the bits of softened bones that came with the soft pink meat, mixed in with the peas. The bones were edible, easily eaten with the meat shreds, but eww. 

I probably made faces, I'm sure I made faces. But I remember it now so very fondly. Comfort food.

Now, 65 years later in my life, I pay for expensive slabs of fresh salmon in the fish case and eat it grilled with a glass of white wine and arugula salad. But the memory and taste and yes, the exquisite shiver of childhood recollection of canned salmon in cream soup over toast has it beat by a mile.

Yum.