Food Memories need a makeover..

I have been reading Molly Wizenberg's darling book, "A Homemade Life". Wow, not only is she a great writer but her recipes look divine.It is a good idea..she writes a couple pages on a memory of her parents/childhood and food and then includes the recipe.Molly's compositions are like comfort-food for the soul. You definitely want to curl up in her charming life. Naturally, it made me reflect on my early days in california and what food memory could I conjure up. Nothing came to mind..I mean not a thing! Well,ok, I had some memories but they weren't exactly good . My mother has some marvelous qualities, but cooking isn't one of them. She overcooked everything and served canned vegetables ( which were also overcooked..gross.) Most meals I couldn't eat, to which she would always say," well, grab yourself a bowl of cereal then." I am sure I have consumed more than a million bowls of Life cereal ( I don't remember her buying any other kind.) Which brings up the issue of variety-there was none. Ironically, the very worst meal of the year was thanksgiving dinner. Her dressing was wet and gooey and included Huge chunks of onion. She also made an oyster dressing-a speciality- that was a white/gray goopy mess of oysters and saltine crackers. The sweet potatoes were her first undercooked item and even the marshmallow sat half-melted and askew. No comment on the turkey. Her lasagna-which was not served at thanksgiving- was decorated with halves of hard boiled eggs. Here is the one memory I came up with. I was about 5 years old and she served me a PB and J. But she had put on slabs of butter Under the peanut butter. Slabs mind you, they weren't even smoothed out. Who does that?!! She made me eat it anyway, and I chocked it down between sobs. Sounds like a chapter out of "mommy dearest" instead of "a homemade life." Cooking just wasn't her thing. I was a skinny little kid..until I learned how to cook for myself!! Do you know who Tasha Tudor was ? An extremely talented artist who drew bucolic scenes of children and chickens and corgi dogs. She illustrated books with these dreamy images of christmas and simple home life. My very favorite was one where the family floated a birthday cake -with candles all aglow- down this meandering creek to the little girl's festivities (obviously it was a summer birthday.) Ubercool. I wanted a life like that!! I loved her drawings and collected practically every book she illustrated. Then I read a bio on this Tasha Tudor and it appears that she had an awful childhood and created these visions to help herself/heal from these memories. Whoa, I am NOT "outing" myself as an abused child. But when I read that about Tasha I thought-good for you, you go girl and all that stuff. Life just NEEDS imagination and creativity.And if I sometimes live vicariously through Tasha's drawings and Molly's yummy childhood memories..so be it.