I would be a horrible game show contestant. In fact, I’d last all of five minutes. It’s not one of my strengths to come up with answers to anything quickly. I often know the answer but it takes me a second to conjure them up…Recently as I was sitting in a Food Writing class, the instructor asked us to write about our first food memory. Now I wasn’t shocked that I couldn’t think of anything right off the top of my head. But five minutes went by. Ten minutes. Still nothing. Not only could I not think of my earliest memory, I couldn’t think of a single memory. So I kind of made one up for class, but couldn’t stop thinking about food memories after class: my parents fed me. I was sure of that. So why couldn’t I remember any landmark meals or dishes?

Well ever since the Food Writing class, I’ve been thinking about these food memories a lot…and thank god, a few have surfaced. I thought I’d record them here so I can fetch them when memory should fail me further down the line, as it surely will:

-Mom’s custard. I believe it came from The Silver Palette cookbook. It was super simple: eggs, milk, and sugar. Mom used to make it late at night (for the next day, I guess) and often after she’d gotten out of the bath so there were wafts of Nivea lotion and sweet milk trickling out of the kitchen. I loved how the custard formed a skin on the top. It was my favorite part. The most basic, simple, satisfying dessert.

-Homemade donuts. Oh god, I loved these. We’d take Pillsbury biscuit dough (half the fun of these was opening that treacherous twist container), punch a hole in the middle, fry it in the deep fat fryer and then quickly roll them in cinnamon and sugar. These smelled like heaven cooking, like a fall morning with nothing on tap except the paper and the couch. Or when you’re little as I was, bunk-bed “blankie tag” with your sister.

-Shepard’s Pie: Mom made this often, and I’ve made it on my own many times– when I was a vegetarian with Boca Burger and now, thankfully, with ground beef. Another really simple, satisfying recipe: ground beef, ketchup, potatoes, corn. I think that’s about it. We had this a lot when mom and dad would go out for the evening (that or TV dinners!). It’s always a little better the next day for some reason…maybe the juices from the meat kind of settle into everything else. The perfect comfort food.

-Lasagna: I have vivid memories of mom and I making lasagna. Many times, but specifically when I was a little girl sitting on the counter at the H Street house. I was more preoccupied with making “mini lasagna roll-ups,” which consisted of little shards of reject noodle, a smattering of ricotta, a little cheese, and…in the ol’ hopper. I don’t know how I ever had room for an actual slice of lasagna after all of the prep eating that I did. But this kind of became my signature dish growing up: whenever I cooked dinner, I’d usually make lasagna. There was something about the logical, methodical nature of it–repeating each ingredient layer over and over until they were gone–that I appreciated. It was predictable in that way. And I’d mastered it.

-Baked Alaska: the opposite of simple in many ways. This is the Christmas dessert that I remember. If I ever have kids, we will have Baked Alaska. In this day and age when everything is so easy to come by, Baked Alaska is not and for that reason, it’s even more special. You can’t just swing by the market and pick some up. Generally speaking, it’s not going to be on the dessert menu at your favorite restaurant. It takes work: making the brownie base before hand, packing layers of ice cream into a mixing bowl so tight and firmly packed that it’ll eventually slide out in the shape of that mixing bowl. Getting the ice cream out….oy. The meringue. Lighting it all on fire with blazing brandy–the real magic. Truthfully Baked Alaska isn’t really the most delicious dessert I’ve ever had. But there’s something about the process and the ritual that has earned it a golden place on my list of childhood foods that I’ll cherish.

So there…there’s a few. I’ll add more as the (slowly) come to me.