food and memories
the first time i ever had pancakes was at a bookstore. it was the kind of bookstore that had a cafe inside and you could stay and eat and read the books you just bought at the store part of the bookstore. i bought a pokemon comicbook that i finished reading before i finished eating the pancakes. and i thought that pancakes were the best food ever and maple syrup was a gift from god.
one time my mom and i were having lunch at a mcdonald’s, and we sat at the booth type seats facing each other. while i was finishing my fries a man entered the mcdonald’s and tried to rob the place and wanted to take the whole cashier counter structure. in a panic, my mom told me to get out of my seat and sit beside her.
the first time g and i watched a movie at the theaters — as opposed to on netflix at home — we had lunch at an italian place that gave free breadsticks. a waiter walks around the restaurant carrying a little basket of warm breadsticks and you could wave at her and gesture for more breadsticks. they used to have al fresco tables for smoking and now they don’t. the last few times we came back to eat there, the waiter doesn’t go around with the little basket anymore and we order their little gourmet burgers instead of pasta to go with breadsticks.
when i brought g to my hometown, we ate a chicken-and-rice meal so spicy she cried. there was no way to separate the hot sauce from the rice or chicken because it was watery (but not watered down), and it had seeped into everything. next time we come back, i’ll make sure to always ask for the sauce to be separated — just in case.
on our flight back home from the trip above we stopped over at singapore for a few hours but didn’t have enough money for a proper meal. we shared some rice-and-pork dish because the mcdonald’s prices at the airport seemed unreasonable. next time, when we come back, we will be able to afford better, but the pork was still great, despite the "being broke" part.
i still remember the first time we made meatballs from scratch because we didn’t used to have the money to buy beef in the amount needed to make meatballs. like everything else with cooking, making them took three times longer than eating them. but it was christmas and it was fun!
i have trouble remembering exact dates for things, which is why i’m trying to journal, but i remember food because they are like time markers to me.
pancakes from childhood are different from pancakes right now, you know what i mean? like, eating pancakes in a cafe in a bookstore with a pokemon comicbook on my lap is different from eating pancakes in bed with g at midnight. but a good different.