I do not truly remember many meals of parsnips. Actually, I cannot remember a specific meal of parsnips. But, when I cut into our farm share of parsnips to make dinner for my own family, the warm feeling of winters from my childhood came flooding back to me.
Now, as I cook them with some onions and garlic, soon to become a parsnip soup, I wonder if my children will look back on parsnips with such fond memories? Will they smell my cooking from their play room, and be drawn down by the delicious promise of dinner? Will they open their minds and mouths to try a new food tonight? In all probable likelyhood, I did not actually EAT them as a child, but I may have. I admit memory is sweeter than reality sometimes.
I often remember my childhood foods fondly as I chop, peel and prepare dinner in my fluorescent lit kitchen, cooking for my family of five. My childhood kitchen was vastly different. We lived in the middle of a hundred acres of woods, with no running water, the less traveled road a long quarter mile from our house, and the only light coming from kerosene Aladdin lamps with frosted chimneys. Our dinners usually consisted of something we grew or raised ourselves on our small homestead plot. Here in my adult kitchen, the floor is a white linoleum print, the street light shines in our kitchen window, and the furnace hums loudly from the basement. The large silver refrigerator stands guard on one side of our kitchen, while the line of modern appliances line the other side of the room.
I do enjoy all the convinces of my current kitchen, running water, food processor, the wide variety of food available, close by at the grocery store. But there are so many fantastical memories set in the small dim kitchen, with the red wooden floor, the big old wood cook stove, and the white ceramic farm house sink. Times were quieter, more in tune with the natural rhythm of the earth, simpler.
Or maybe I was just younger.