Food Time Machine

There are a lot of days I wish I had a food time machine so I could have some of my favorite foods again. One of the reasons I learned to cook was so I could re-create some of my favorite dishes. If I hadn't learned to cook, I would have lost forever my Grandma's potato salad, her gravy, spicy hot tamales, my Mom's Swiss steak (which she still makes but not as often as I would like!), my Dad's shrimp wymus (which I still don't have exact but that's because he made it up and there is no actual recipe), my Grandma Kathleen's bourbon balls. There are some recipes I'm still working on, like my Grandfather's potato soup and my Grandma's bread pudding. Some of these recipes I haven't actually tasted the real thing since I was little girl. And if I finally recreate them, it will be good. But if I had a food time machine it would be wonderful. I could taste the recipes the way they were and ask some questions. But mostly I would be able to see and eat with the people I have loved and lost.

Food brings us together and binds us in an invisible but tangible way. Recipes are handed down from generation to generation to insure a little bit of immortality to the person who made them for us. I was only seven when my paternal grandfather died but I can remember that he made his potato soup all the time and it was so delicious and it made me feel safe and warm and loved. My brother and I still laugh at the way my Grandma Wilhite made biscuits and gravy. She was an awesome cook but a terrible baker. Her biscuits bordered on the awful. They were hard, flat little things (which seems really strange to me since they were Bisquick biscuits so I have no idea how she managed to get them not to rise) and they were almost always burned on the bottom. But as my brother says, it didn't matter because once you put her gravy on them they were heavenly. They were just an edible spoon really because you would have looked weird spooning gravy directly into your mouth but trust me, you wanted to.

There are also restaurants, now long gone, that I wish my time machine could take me. Las Vegas doesn't really appreciate history and so no one mourns the old restaurants. But most of the places I miss were family run restaurants that knew our names and welcomed us in to eat. Like the Miller Family Steakhouse, which was in an old Sizzler location and Mr. Miller always made sure to say hi when we came in for Sunday dinner, which was about once a month for most of the eighties. We knew when his kids got married, when the Millers had a new grandchild. I miss the Silver Star, a takeout only Chinese place where you couldn't see the kitchen but you could hear the woks a clangin' and they made the best fried rice I have ever eaten in my life (it was almost black and so wonderful). You could order enough food for a family of five for under fifteen bucks and have enough leftovers for a week. I miss the chicken chimichangas at Garcia's. They also made a killer chocolate mousse with Kahlua in it. There was the crab rangoon and strawberry chicken at Kwelin. The pizza at Pizza Inn. Enchilada's at Hilda's. The turkey sandwich at Country Inn on those yeast rolls and their killer honey mustard dressing. The soup and cottage cheese dip at the Alpine Village. I miss the atmosphere at Poppa Gar's. That Italian place we used to eat at on Boulder Highway. The food was so good at those restaurants but even better is the warm memories I have of eating there with my friends and family.

If you had a food time machine, where would you go? Who would you eat with? What food memory makes you happy?

My brother got a cast iron skillet for Christmas and he asked me if I would show him how to make my grandmother's gravy. I'd be honored. I hope I can do it justice. So that when he makes his own gravy he can savor the flavor of sitting at her table, crammed together in that tiny dining room, the table groaning under the weight of all that food. So his taste buds can remember separating the burned biscuit and heaping gravy over it. So that he can taste her love.