-L. wrote:

> Do you have bad food memories from childhood (or otherwise) that stick
> out in your mind?

Yep, the birthday party I attended where the only food served (other
than the cake & icecream) was egg salad sandwiches. At the time I
loathed eggs, no matter how they were cooked, but trying to be polite I
gagged one down -- much to my dismay, and that of the other guests, it
didn't stay down and I didn't make it away from the table before it
came back up. I still won't eat egg salad, although I enjoy Spanish
omelets and hard boiled eggs with lots of salt & pepper.

The other occasion was at least at home. Cream of Wheat, my brother's
favorite food. I had no particular dislike of the stuff but I was
incubating a fierce case of gastroenteritis when I had my last bowl of
it. When I got violently ill, the only thing I could taste coming up
was cream of wheat. I haven't eaten it again in 45 years. Every time
I see the stuff on the shelf at the grocery store the memory returns.

Something Mom served regularly was salt cod & scrunchions (bits of
salted fatback, rendered until crisp) with plain boiled potatoes. When
she served that my brothers and I usually retreated to a meal of bread
& peanut butter (they ate theirs sprinkled with sugar, I ate mine with
molasses). Fast forward to 1976, Toronto, I'm 22 and recently wed.
One day I called Mom:
"Mom, how do you cook salt cod & scrunchions?"
"Oh, my God! You're pregnant!"
"Eh?????"
"You hate salt cod & scrunchions so if you're craving that you're
pregnant."
"Sorry to disappoint you mom, I'm just craving salt cod."

Gabby