Archives for December 2006

Do you find that certain things, when you experience them, suddenly make you think of something from the past? Smells, experiences, sights, sounds.

What triggers your memory?

When I walk into a house where someone has recently been baking bread I immediately feel good. I remember all the times my mom baked bread when I was a kid and how we’d eagerly await that first loaf of bread coming out of the oven and spreading butter or margarine on the fresh piece of warm bread and eating it, and then having another. In our family that first loaf of bread never lasted very long, perhaps an hour if it was lucky as I think we’d all have two or three pieces of the delicious fresh bread as soon as it was out of the oven and cool enough to cook.

The smell of cinnamon also invokes a similar memory. My mother used to bake pies quite often. Meat pies, butter tarts made with the same type of pastry dough used for pies, apple, rhubarb, and peach pies were also made frequently when the fruit was in season too. However, there was always a few scraps of pie dough when she was done making two or three pies.

What to do with the left over pie dough? Well she’d roll it out into an oval or rounded flat shape, spread it with butter or margarine, sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon on it and then roll the dough. She’d then put it into an empty pie plate and bake it in the oven for about 15 minutes. The butter and brown sugar would bubble out and the smell of cinnamon would waft through the whole house. By the time the cinnamon roll was done our whole family would be in the kitchen waiting for the sticky treat to cool enough to eat. Yummy!

The smell of an open meadow always makes me thing of our old cottage area too. Whenever we are driving in the middle of summer through the county side I always put the window down so I can smell the mixed scent of wild grasses and flowers.

What kinds of things trigger good memories for you?