Writing Your Memories of Food
Memories of food can be significant. The food you hate. The food you love.
A camping breakfast. Photo: Tanya Clarke 1992 (I think)
What’s For Breakfast?
I found the picture above while searching for some other photos.
I’m hazarding a guess the year was 1992. I can’t believe it’s nearly 30 years ago. A few of us went camping that summer, Cornwall or Devon, I can’t remember which.
Looking at the ordered chaos above of cups of tea, a tower of buttered bread and an enormous bag of sugar, the scene couldn’t be further from our pandemic experiences now. Here, we probably hadn’t washed our hands properly for three days aside from swimming in the sea. Now, the skin on my hands is so dry from hand sanitiser and washing it’s peeling off around my fingernails.
There’s a fork half-buried in the grass, some sort of cake or pastry in a paper bag, maybe it’s a scone, and an upside-down tub of margarine, thankfully with the lid on. What a story here!
Write About Food
Memories of food can be significant. The food you hate. The food you love. Do you cook? Or is the microwave your friend? What are the smells of food that linger in your mind? Smell is an incredibly potent memory trigger. Try to describe the smell, the taste and the memory the food evokes. This will hone your skills in imagining a scene for your reader through your senses. Get into the details of time and place. What are the emotions these thoughts bring up? Be careful here if the feelings are strong. Do be gentle with yourself.
Or why not write a story using the scene in the photo. There are a lot of wonderful details in this image. Take some time to look around. When you are ready to write, try not to generalise or make abstractions. Details, details. Have fun.
