Childhood Indulgences

I indulged this evening on a high fat, white flour, sugar laden treat. Why, you ask? Not necessarily because I wanted to share with my children one of my favorite memories from childhood, but because I wanted to experience it again for myself. Whatever could rank so high?

Fresh, homemade white bread with real butter and strawberry freezer jam. Yep, nothing too far out. Pretty easy to accomplish. And absolutely satisfying.



I don't remember too many specifics about the food we ate while growing up. My mother was a stay-at-home mom as was fairly typical in the late 60's and 70's, and she prepared simple foods as much as I can remember. She supplemented them with quite a bit from her garden that produced nearly year-round in southern California. But oh, I do remember her strawberry freezer jam from her strawberry patch. On the days she would make the jam, she would bake from scratch a loaf of white bread. That in itself was special to us as we generally ate whole wheat. And she always served real butter, nothing imitation.

So today after u-picking 14 pounds of local strawberries, I set to work turning them into freezer jam for our family. Then I cheated by using my one-hour cycle on my bread machine but turned out a pretty respectable loaf of homemade bread. I set these out on the table with butter and and watched my family devour. It's just one of those foods that goes down easy, slice after slice after slice.

I believe I satisfied my stroll down memory lane, and it was every bit as good as I remember forty-plus years ago. Have you ever gone out of your way to recreate a food from childhood? It would be fun to share what others remember as well.

As for me...I'm headed downstairs to see if anyone left a last slice of bread for me to slather up with butter and strawberry jam.