Since I was little, I've felt that there may well be an extensive labyrinth existing inside my brain. It surprises me sometimes how something - a sight, a sound, or even a smell - can trigger a vivid memory inside my head. Today, it was lunch. I fixed one of my favorite foods, one that I hadn't had for a long time. I made fried potatoes with a little bit of onion. The kitchen smelled so good.
Fried potatoes was a staple when I was a kid, and I loved them. In a continuing refining of what I eat on a regular basis, I've relegated potatoes to being an occasional treat rather than being a staple. It makes me enjoy and appreciate them more. I've enjoyed getting acquainted with the newer varieties of potatoes available now, especially the Yukon Gold.
As those potatoes and onions cooked and the apartment filled with the fragrance, I was reliving vivid moments of food scents from my childhood. And suddenly, instead of smelling frying potatoes and onions.....I was smelling cookies.
For many years, the town where I live now (where we shopped weekly when I was a kid) was home to a cookie factory......Banner Cookies. As you came off the square and started south on Main Street, you started to smell the aroma of fresh-baked cookies. The fragrance hung in the air at least to the first set of railroad tracks. The scent was so strong, you could even smell it on the weekends.
Anybody who was in Carrollton during that same time frame knows exactly what I'm talking about. The cookie factory closed quite some time ago; the building became a different business and now sits empty. But when I moved back home in late 1993, in my mind I could still smell those cookies when I drove down South Main. The kids would get amused at my always saying I could smell baking cookies. They couldn't smell anything close to that.
For several years in the summer, Mom's homemaker's club would take a day and come to Carrollton and tour different businesses and facilities. Since it was summer, many of the ladies would bring their kids with them. One summer the cookie factory was on the tour list. It was fascinating to go through the facility and see the different steps necessary for creating those delectable cookies. As the tour ended, we each got a cookie fresh off the belt.
They made many different varieties of cookies at that factory; they were all so good. And as with any factory-type business, there were occasional "product fails". That's where the local public was the winner. The factory kept a supply of wax-lined brown paper bags that would hold five pounds of cookies. They would be loaded up with the broke or misshapen cookies, and we could stop by the office of the cookie factory and buy one of these bags for $1.
There were all flavors of broken cookies inside, and often more whole cookies than broken ones. Almost always in the bottom of the bag would be an entire package of cookies, helping the bag hit that five-pound mark. And then there were the crumbs. Being a product of my environment (don't waste anything), I would put the crumbs to good use. Nothing tastes yummier than a bowl of cookie crumbs covered in milk.
I probably wouldn't get by with that in today's health-conscious world. I can't imagine my kids letting the grandkids eat a bowl of cookie crumbs and milk. But when I was a kid, that was a real taste treat.....especially with whole milk from the cow in the pasture. Talk about the good old days!
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