From my Dad and his family, I have a deep-seeded appreciation from good old, home-cooked American style meals. Fried-chicken, bacon lard, apple pie with a shortening crust, mashed potatoes with ridiculous amounts of butter, homemade oatmeal bread, salad with cheddar cheese and sour cream as dressing, pan-fried trout, three bean salad, and jello molds with suspended fruit inside: these are things that still taste amazing to me, even if the taste is just the sweet nectar of nostalgia. My Granny Gwen's kitchen was the first place I ever saw a cast-iron pan, and I still take pleasure in eating oatmeal out of the pink plastic bowls she has had since the 60s. Their house is still my favorite place to eat Thanksgiving dinner, and everything I eat there always tastes like home.
From my Mom and her family I get a smattering of the same--my great-grandmother's apple crisp is still the best I've ever had, and I can't replicate it. From my mom I acquired a delight in trying brand new recipes (she has a binder much bigger than mine full of cut-outs from Martha Stewart and Sunset), along with a lifelong adoration of seafood (she fed me baby shrimp on my highchair instead of Cheerios). Her cold shellfish pasta with spinach pesto sauce, followed by her italian cheesecake...still on my top-5 list of best foods ever. Also included is her recipe for white-bean chicken chili, which I've since learned to make with fresh ingredients. Thanks, Mom.
From her brother, Carl, and his wife Sandrine and her family, I learned the pleasures of eating truly fresh food along with smatterings of French-style cuisine. Sandrine hails from Toulouse, France, land of open-air markets and neighborhood butchers. After she and Carl spent five years living on a farm and literally living off their own land, they integrated pieces of that lifestyle into their home in Seattle proper, and I've been lucky enough to glean from the process and experiment in her lovely kitchen. Because of them, I've learned what freshly laid eggs taste like, why it's worth the trouble to freeze and store all the fruit from your plum tree you can't manage to eat right away, and how amazing fresh sourdough bread tastes, even when you forget the salt, and how to know when fish is cooked just right. From her mother, Marie Paule, I learned to make the perfect (and easiest!) pie crust, the ambrosia that is bouillabaisse, and a healthy respect for the process of making flan.
And of course, there are the dozens of other meals, restaurants, vacations, classes, friends, relatives, and myriad other sites from which I continue to learn. You'll find out more about these places (I hope!) as I continue to write.
