The meals that make us who we are

Meals that make us who we are

food memories live on

Author’s own image

Yesterday when debating what to eat for breakfast, I decided on dippy eggs and soldiers. While I was cutting up the toast into neat little stacks, a memory struck me from 20 years before.

Me, sitting on the kitchen bench, legs swinging with happiness. My grandfather, next to me, a gruff old Dutchman, is methodically slicing the toast and cracking the top of the egg with a satisfying plop.

I didn’t know it then, but my grandfather had been through a lot to get to that kitchen that morning, making my breakfast.

At 12, he was arrested and sent to jail for 6 months for stealing a loaf of bread off a neighbour’s window in Holland.

At 17, he fled the country when he and a friend were scared senseless by German soldiers near the border. With his aunty already in hiding nearby, and public executions occurring weekly in their town, he ran to the harbour, jumped on a ship, and left everything he knew and loved to start again in Australia.

My grandfather was not a patient man. He hid demons that we still don’t know much about today, his secrets now lying most likely dead back in Europe. His temper was fierce, and more than once I was a little scared when he yelled; his booming, lilting English filled with anger.

But, he was also kind, and loving and funny more often than not, and never so more than when he was in the kitchen, cooking us eggs and soldiers. Although my grandmother was by far the superior cook of the family, this was his domain. He loved salt, and would feed us teaspoons full of Vegemite as a treat while he cooked.

For a snack sometimes, he would prepare Matjes herring – fluffy white bread, slathered with butter, topped with slimy, salty fermented fish and sprinkled with raw white onion. I loved it, partly because I liked it, mostly because it made him proud when I said that I did.

Food memories are tied to such fleeting moments in our lives – just the waft of a cake or the crack of an egg can throw us back in time.

So, of course, I grabbed my young son and plopped him next to me on the counter so his legs could swing with glee, and hopefully this small memory will live on for a little while yet.