For me, it’s Kraft Mac and Cheese. That bright blue box holds a bittersweet memory of my father, who, as far as I can recall, only ever cooked two things: Kraft Mac and Cheese and rice smothered in milk, cinnamon, and sugar.
I was about nine years old when I remember standing at the kitchen counter, watching him make it. He had this little ritual—he’d take the packet of powdered “cheese” and whack it against the edge of the counter, a quick sharp motion to force the powder to the bottom before tearing it open and dumping it into the pot. I can still hear the sound it made, a sharp thwack against the tile, the kind of small detail that etches itself into memory.
When I was twelve, my father died by his own hand. After that, I couldn’t bring myself to eat Kraft Mac and Cheese for years. It wasn’t just a food anymore; it was a reminder, tangled in grief and loss.
Eventually, I did eat it again. When I made it, almost instinctively, I found myself whacking the cheese packet against the counter, just like he had. Curious, I asked my sisters if they ever made it. Each of them said the same thing: they, too, give the packet that same sharp whack. Without ever talking about it, we had all carried on this small, unspoken ritual. It’s a strange kind of inheritance, bound up in powdered cheese and shared grief, but somehow, it feels like keeping a piece of him alive.
God. Thank you for sharing that, April. I'm so sorry to learn about that loss. That's... a tangled food memory to be sure. But how nice, in its way, that you and your sisters somehow all knew how to bring it into your current lives. And it makes me realize as parents how we never really know which of the things we do are going to be the ones that our children notice. They probably never listen to our lectures: but they soak up the things we do.
It's so often the mundane little things that stick and take on meaning for children.
p.s. I'm sorry for blindsiding you with that story. It's simply the fabric of my life and I forget that his death can still seem shocking to people who don't know.
Thank you so much for sharing this story. Your writing always stirs something so deep and raw inside me. I re-read Hell Hath Enlarged Herself a few weeks back, and I'm still feeling it. And I think this article will be sticking with me for a while, too.
For me, it's a drink, rather than food. Coffee. I went completely off it almost 15 years ago; at the same time as I'd been having some strange medical issues (pseudo-strokes). Something in my brain connected the two, and I was almost...scared of drinking coffee. Even the smell was off putting.
Fast forward to about 6 months ago, while I was just starting to do the really deep, dark work in trauma therapy, and I suddenly started craving coffee again. So I started drinking it, and within a week, I started having flashbacks and memories of my childhood and teenage best friend. One morning, 3 sips in, my head was instantly bombarded with 20 years of memories of him all at once. How safe I had always felt with him. How I never had to pretend.
And I remembered that he had made me my first ever cup of coffee, and we had drunk it whenever we were together. It was our sacred ritual, sitting on his garden bench. When I stopped drinking coffee, I forgot about him. Like he never existed. I tried to track him down that night, and discovered that he's taken his own life just 3 years ago.
I now know that the pseudo-strokes I'd had were caused by a huge stressor that had triggered memories of a traumatic event from when me and my friend were very young together. We'd both known, somewhere inside us; but had never been able to say the words to each other. And eventually, it was easier to try and forget, and we had drifted apart.
So much of me wishes I'd taken a sip 4 years ago. So now I take my coffee and sit outside every morning, and imagine what he would be saying if he was still here.
God. Thank you for sharing that with me. I'm so sorry that both he and you went through the thing you went through, and for the knock-on effects so much later, and that the realization happened after a point where you might finally have been able to talk about it together. That's harsh.
But I'm glad you at least had each other while you did, and that it's something that's now present in you as an event to confront and deal with, and move past. It's unbelievably strange the way that tastes can knit all these moments together, as if there's some back-brain part of us that connects the dots without our conscious input. Weird thing, along those lines: I only realized/remembered after this piece was posted that tomorrow is my mother's birthday.
Flipping heck, as always, you've got me *right there.
June-December 2018.
I'd been living in a Holiday Inn (like a slightly more social Alan Partridge) on the M1, for the last 6 months, following a mild midlife crisis where I'd decided to totally change career and retrain in something I'd never even contemplated doing before.
Mum had been poorly for a good while. Cancer. I buried my head quite a lot, in both my new books and the sand. She'd be right, her texts and calls told me she was doing well and fighting it.
I qualified in November, came back to my wonderfully supportive wife, and returned to reality.
She was doing. Just doing. But carrying on.
Then an exploritary op went awry (unbeknown to us at the time) and a few days post she got sepsis, at home, and we went to hospital for the inevitable.
She hung on.
My sister, wife, brother in law and father sat around her bed, time passed. We talked, we remembered, we realised nothing was imminent. We got hungry.
Now. We've never eaten KFC together before. We get together very regular, loving a Chinese or Indian. Pizza is good, chippy too. But someone mentioned Kentucky had got "new" chips on the menu.
So, coming up on midnight, two of us broke out and headed to Fat Mans Corner (a local major junction that has all of the good stuff takeaways in one enclosed area), to buy many bags of fried chicken with assortments, and snuck them into the hospital (via the 4th, post 3 locked, door we could find).
Sat in the tiny friend and families room provided, we chowed down on all the secret herbs and spices, reminiscent, laughing about how mum would ABSOLUTELY bollock us for this (jeez, she really would have; sorry, Ma).
Then we returned bedside, and as you, with my sister and I each side, and dad by her head, we said goodbye, and she left.
Nuff said really, but I've only had Kentucky a handful of times since, with different people, but without a shadow, there's only one thing on my mind as I wipe my fingers afterwards.
Whoa. You did for me there. I felt like I was actually THERE.
Maybe it's no co-incidence that it's not just weddings that are associated with eating, but deaths and wakes too... maybe it's integrally associated in some way, big emotions and food. I'm glad you were there at the end.
And I kind of love the idea of a next of takeaways being nicknamed "Fat Man's Corner".
Ha, thank you. I've no idea where the colloquialism arose, but it should be addressed that way on Google Maps!
Absolutely agreed. The mournful drive from the crematorium, on all occasions I've had that dreadful trip, has always been followed by a Sopranos style sit down, with many extended friends and family (and probably a little too much drink!).
As you rightly said, comfort comes from emotion, of all kinds.
In brighter news, I make an ace risotto 😊
An hour and a bit of slowly adding and manipulating, keeping a side eye upon, whilst keeping on top of the dishes. Radio on in the background, a glass of red on the side...
Yup. Rice dishes are the king.
Thanks, as always, for your share and making me think about things I enjoy thinking about.
There is, for reasons lost in time, a very strange New Zealand delicacy. The Cheese Roll.
This is not, despite how it sounds, just a ball of cheese. This is not even a nationwide food of Aotearoa New Zealand.
The Cheese roll is also wryly nicknamed Southland Sushi, as the famously aridly witted Southlanders call them to "fancy up" one of the most ludicrously basic dishes imaginable and sell them to tourists and Aucklanders at enormous markups.
It's specific to the south of the South Island (in Te Reo Maori: Te Waipounamu, the "Greenstone waters", the island named for the precious greenstone that is the treasure of the rivers of the south. (Also, entertainingly, The South Island is Te Waka a Māui, the boat from which the demigod Māui fished up the North Island, literally called Te-Ika-a-Māui (the fish of Māui). (This is further proof that (a) Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson , while big, was not suitably big to play our favourite Demigod, (b) the north island came second, and therefore we of the south have every right to call ourselves The Mainland, even though we know in our heart of hearts that we're really just sitting on Maui's bloody great canoe, but those damned Aucklanders can just STFU, johnny-come-latelys that they are) (c) Te Reo Māori continues to be poetic and lyrical in a way that English struggles with (I mean, how imaginative is "the south island" compared to "the greenstone waters"!), and (d) Māori origin stories are amazing and even Tangata Tiriti (People of The Treaty, the name for the non-indigenous people who came to NZ after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the foundational document by which Maori agreed to share NZ with the British crown) such as myself consider them part of our lively and vibrant culture, (despite the attempts of wanna-be american-style libertarian politicians who are trying to undermine it and the Treaty)))).
Where was I? That sentence was awful. Oh yeah, cheese rolls. They rock. And until I moved to the North Island, I didn't even realise that they were a hyperspecifically regional cuisine.
Strictly speaking I grew up ABOVE the geographic Cheese Roll Line, but still in the South Island, so we saw Cheese Rolls on special occasions. Aucklanders and other North Islanders regularly don't even know they exist. The Cheese Roll line, traditionally the Waitaki river, separates The Deep South of New Zealand and their Antarctician winds, rain and snow from the rest of us. The Deep South is all Scottish ancestry, rolling rhotic Rs, and astonishing landscape that would later be claimed by Lord of the Rings and millions of happy tourists in hiking boots and puffer jackets. Apparently, the south is ALSO home to lots of very cheap white bread, an enormous tasty cheddar cheese industry, and weather cold enough to justify creation of the cheese roll as a soup accompaniment for Autumn, Winter, Spring, and occasional unseasonably cold summer days.
My Mother is an Australian Kiwi, my Dad Irish but a Kiwi since his teens, but they had clearly made a trip south at some point and brought the Secret Recipe for Cheese Rolls back to our home city of Christchurch, the largest city of the South Island and 2nd largest city of NZ. It was a HIT. I am very thankful for their smuggling of the recipe north.
Oh, yeah, the recipe. Alarmingly simple. Grated "tasty" cheddar cheese. The sharper, the better. A tin of evaporated milk. Finely chopped onion if you're fancy. A packet of Maggi brand powdered onion soup, found in every NZ pantry. A dash of mustard if you're REALLY keen. The whitest and cheapest pre-sliced white bread loaf you can find. Butter to baste the hell out of them. Mix everything except the butter and bread in a bowl, melt it down into a goo so it spreads on the bread, roll each slice of bread up into a roll, crusts on if that's your thing, or off if you're serving to royalty and/or fussy children, secure with a toothpick, baste with melted butter, bake in the oven until crispy and lightly browned and the contents are gooey and sexy.
Birthday treat? Cheese rolls. Fundraising for the school fair? Cheese rolls. Finger food for a childhood party in the late 70s and early 80s? Cheese rolls. Dad's funeral? Cheese rolls. Depressing winter day? Cheese rolls. Kids won't eat tonight? Cheese rolls. Work snack that will buy you the gratitude of everyone present? Cheese rolls. International Food Fair at my Auckland school to introduce NEW tangata tiriti to NZ cuisine? Cheese rolls. Want to blow a foreigner's mind? Cheese rolls. Want me to do literally anything for you? Cheese rolls. Want to propose to a loved one but need to butter them up first? Cheese rolls and NZ Sav Blanc.
Sweet as, bro. Nice one. Kia ora.
Gooey. Crunchy. Warming from the cockle areas right through to the soul. Soooooooo good.
That is the best thing I've read in a long time, and I'm going to have to try making a Cheese Roll now — it sounds outrageously tasty. And also as if it's frowned upon by most cardiac doctors.
My mother was an awful cook! She tried so hard. She’d spend hours standing over the cooker, making god knows what, but we knew that whatever it turned out to be, it was made with love. My sisters, brother, and I would dutifully try to eat every morsel, reassuring her that it was all very delicious while trying to feed as much as we dared to our dog sitting under the table.
She was, however, a fantastic baker! Her cakes, tarts, and choux buns overfilled with delicious chocolate and cream were hits everywhere! But the pudding I remember the most was her treacle tart, a masterpiece always made if one of us was unwell or had just had a bad day. Needless to say, between the four of us, it was made often. Happy days.
I sometimes wonder whether — with home cooks at least — you can only either bake, or make savory food. I can't bake at all ;-) Treacle tart though... god, it's been years since I've had that.
Unfortunately, for my kids, I’m exactly like my mother in the culinary department! On the up side, their father is an amazing cook and their b’day cakes were always amazing! :-)
When I was a kid, my dad was very much into sailing. Growing up in Perth, Western Australia, the majority of my formative years were spent on or in the water. I was under ten when Dad decided to buy a sailing dinghy, largely so his son could learn to sail on something a little smaller than an actual yacht. We entered one race, which ended about as well as you'd expect a from boat crewed by a middle-aged man and an eight year old. Racing was not my thing.
Recreational sailing, on the other hand, was a joy. Flying across the water, wind, sun, and salt in my face. It was great. For our Christmas holidays we used to travel to the south coast, not far from Margaret River, and rent a little fibro house near the beach. The sailing dinghy, Anaconda, would be towed behind the car and launched almost as soon as we had unpacked.
Of course, being a small boy, sometimes the lure of sandcastles and rock pools was stronger than that of sheets and rudders. So it came to pass that my father headed out alone. Not a worry, he was experienced and not far from land. Mum had a set of binoculars and they'd arranged a signal if trouble arose. Arms crossed, above his head, so there'd be no risk of mistaking a simple wave for a sign or trouble. A perfect system.
Except, of course, in the case of a dislocated shoulder.
Somehow, Dad managed to navigate his way past the small reef and onto the beach, were he exited the vessel and promptly collapsed, to be found by some other holidaymakers and rushed to hospital where he underwent surgery to shorten the tendon in his shoulder. That was the end of the sailing dinghy.
What does this have to do with meatloaf?
Well, our holiday neighbours, a family who always rented the place next to ours (and who had an amazing Meccano set) heard about what had happened and brought around a meatloaf. My mum was, and is, a brilliant cook who introduced me to a huge variety of foods from a very young age but we'd never had meatloaf before. It was amazing. The crust, the moist interior, the slathering of tomato sauce. It wasn't my favourite thing (that honour goes to schnitzel) but it was such a comfort. This was the first time I'd really understood that my father was human, fallible and able to be seriously injured. That was a pretty scary realisation. Somehow this baked slab of mince and vegetables made that ok. Made it a normal part of life.
I don't often eat meatloaf these days, but it's always a comfort when I do.
Wow. There's a hell of a lot wrapped up in that story — and thank you for sharing it. What a strange moment it is when you abruptly realize that a parent isn't (and shouldn't be) some unknowable god-like figure, but is a human just like us... and so needs the kind of care and compassion we do.
I've had good meatloaf in my life, but whenever I make it, it's disappointing. Maybe there's something in it being a comfort food that you have to be given by someone else...
Lovely of you to share this. My beloved English dad introduced me to Guinness back in the day. Could not drink one after he passed until I married my late English husband.
Finally enjoyed one again. But will not drink one away from Great Britain still. 🤗
Some things have a right place, and that's often to do with the right people. I'm sorry to hear of both those losses, but glad there's a way of remembering them in a glass.
Thanks for your story about the fried rice, and to the others who have commented for their stories. Food plays such a strong role in our memories, what we perceived then as comfort and how our associations with this can change over the years.
I grew up in a small town in southern Arizona. I am not exaggerating when I tell you it has the best Mexican food you can find in the state. Many people will drive two hours from Phoenix to eat this food. I had great-grandparents, grandparents, a mom, a stepdad, a dad and stepmom, aunts, uncles, cousins and many siblings. A large family and, hence, many losses as time marches on.
There are two major food categories I associate with loss and comfort growing up. One is Mexican food, and the other is Mormon food. Once someone passed away, the loss would be known by everyone quickly. And within hours, friends and neighbors would show up with large boxes containing burros (burritos to anyone else) from the local Mexican food restaurants that would tempt even the most sorrowful appetite. There would be so many boxes lined up — dozens of bean & cheese burros, beef & bean burros, quarts of enchilada sauce and hot sauce. If it was in December, there would also be homemade tamales. I remember the sight as a sign of the love and respect my hometown had for my loved ones who had died. Also, they were the only things any of us wanted to eat at those times. Anything else would have been, well, wrong.
Now for the Mormon side of the family, the funeral service is always followed by a big luncheon prepared by a ladies’ auxiliary called The Relief Society. I’m sure there were many tasty dishes, but the only one that mattered was the potatoes — the Funeral Potatoes to be more specific. It involves hash browns, cheese, sour cream, probably canned cream of whatever soup. Sometimes green chilis. I know, but damn, they were good.
We all live far away now. My siblings and I attended a celebration there this summer and the visit was the first in years for all of us. We ate Mexican food six times in three days. No apologies.
No apologies required :-) And I've had something like those Funeral Potatoes before and they were DELICIOUS. Sometimes the old food is the good food. And I was saying to Andy's comment how it's interesting how food is so intertwined with coming to terms with death... with wakes and food trains and kind friends and neighbors all knowing that's what's needed.
For me it’s a special raunchy dark Trini curry I shared with my dog Lilith. She is gone and it’s off the menu.
Moving along… there’s going to be a Trinidadian/Guyanese food place somewhere in your city, go! Have roti, doubles, and Caribbean style fried rice. I dare you not to fall in love.
Thank you :-) And sadly there's not a Caribbean restaurant in town... because a good rice and peas (there used to be a place near us in London that did a fantastic one) almost approaches SFR...
My parents were from Texas, and both grew up on farms, so Deep South. My comfort foods from my childhood are fried chicken and pecan pie (made from pecans growing on the trees on my grandmother’s farm). Chaz makes a pecan pie for me at Thanksgiving. My grandmother was Southern Baptist, hence a teetotaler, so Chaz has modified the pecan recipe to add bourbon. Oh, yum.
For me, it’s Kraft Mac and Cheese. That bright blue box holds a bittersweet memory of my father, who, as far as I can recall, only ever cooked two things: Kraft Mac and Cheese and rice smothered in milk, cinnamon, and sugar.
I was about nine years old when I remember standing at the kitchen counter, watching him make it. He had this little ritual—he’d take the packet of powdered “cheese” and whack it against the edge of the counter, a quick sharp motion to force the powder to the bottom before tearing it open and dumping it into the pot. I can still hear the sound it made, a sharp thwack against the tile, the kind of small detail that etches itself into memory.
When I was twelve, my father died by his own hand. After that, I couldn’t bring myself to eat Kraft Mac and Cheese for years. It wasn’t just a food anymore; it was a reminder, tangled in grief and loss.
Eventually, I did eat it again. When I made it, almost instinctively, I found myself whacking the cheese packet against the counter, just like he had. Curious, I asked my sisters if they ever made it. Each of them said the same thing: they, too, give the packet that same sharp whack. Without ever talking about it, we had all carried on this small, unspoken ritual. It’s a strange kind of inheritance, bound up in powdered cheese and shared grief, but somehow, it feels like keeping a piece of him alive.
God. Thank you for sharing that, April. I'm so sorry to learn about that loss. That's... a tangled food memory to be sure. But how nice, in its way, that you and your sisters somehow all knew how to bring it into your current lives. And it makes me realize as parents how we never really know which of the things we do are going to be the ones that our children notice. They probably never listen to our lectures: but they soak up the things we do.
It's so often the mundane little things that stick and take on meaning for children.
p.s. I'm sorry for blindsiding you with that story. It's simply the fabric of my life and I forget that his death can still seem shocking to people who don't know.
This was so moving to read, April. The fact that you and your sisters all do that same thing is so touching.
Thank you so much for sharing this story. Your writing always stirs something so deep and raw inside me. I re-read Hell Hath Enlarged Herself a few weeks back, and I'm still feeling it. And I think this article will be sticking with me for a while, too.
For me, it's a drink, rather than food. Coffee. I went completely off it almost 15 years ago; at the same time as I'd been having some strange medical issues (pseudo-strokes). Something in my brain connected the two, and I was almost...scared of drinking coffee. Even the smell was off putting.
Fast forward to about 6 months ago, while I was just starting to do the really deep, dark work in trauma therapy, and I suddenly started craving coffee again. So I started drinking it, and within a week, I started having flashbacks and memories of my childhood and teenage best friend. One morning, 3 sips in, my head was instantly bombarded with 20 years of memories of him all at once. How safe I had always felt with him. How I never had to pretend.
And I remembered that he had made me my first ever cup of coffee, and we had drunk it whenever we were together. It was our sacred ritual, sitting on his garden bench. When I stopped drinking coffee, I forgot about him. Like he never existed. I tried to track him down that night, and discovered that he's taken his own life just 3 years ago.
I now know that the pseudo-strokes I'd had were caused by a huge stressor that had triggered memories of a traumatic event from when me and my friend were very young together. We'd both known, somewhere inside us; but had never been able to say the words to each other. And eventually, it was easier to try and forget, and we had drifted apart.
So much of me wishes I'd taken a sip 4 years ago. So now I take my coffee and sit outside every morning, and imagine what he would be saying if he was still here.
God. Thank you for sharing that with me. I'm so sorry that both he and you went through the thing you went through, and for the knock-on effects so much later, and that the realization happened after a point where you might finally have been able to talk about it together. That's harsh.
But I'm glad you at least had each other while you did, and that it's something that's now present in you as an event to confront and deal with, and move past. It's unbelievably strange the way that tastes can knit all these moments together, as if there's some back-brain part of us that connects the dots without our conscious input. Weird thing, along those lines: I only realized/remembered after this piece was posted that tomorrow is my mother's birthday.
Flipping heck, as always, you've got me *right there.
June-December 2018.
I'd been living in a Holiday Inn (like a slightly more social Alan Partridge) on the M1, for the last 6 months, following a mild midlife crisis where I'd decided to totally change career and retrain in something I'd never even contemplated doing before.
Mum had been poorly for a good while. Cancer. I buried my head quite a lot, in both my new books and the sand. She'd be right, her texts and calls told me she was doing well and fighting it.
I qualified in November, came back to my wonderfully supportive wife, and returned to reality.
She was doing. Just doing. But carrying on.
Then an exploritary op went awry (unbeknown to us at the time) and a few days post she got sepsis, at home, and we went to hospital for the inevitable.
She hung on.
My sister, wife, brother in law and father sat around her bed, time passed. We talked, we remembered, we realised nothing was imminent. We got hungry.
Now. We've never eaten KFC together before. We get together very regular, loving a Chinese or Indian. Pizza is good, chippy too. But someone mentioned Kentucky had got "new" chips on the menu.
So, coming up on midnight, two of us broke out and headed to Fat Mans Corner (a local major junction that has all of the good stuff takeaways in one enclosed area), to buy many bags of fried chicken with assortments, and snuck them into the hospital (via the 4th, post 3 locked, door we could find).
Sat in the tiny friend and families room provided, we chowed down on all the secret herbs and spices, reminiscent, laughing about how mum would ABSOLUTELY bollock us for this (jeez, she really would have; sorry, Ma).
Then we returned bedside, and as you, with my sister and I each side, and dad by her head, we said goodbye, and she left.
Nuff said really, but I've only had Kentucky a handful of times since, with different people, but without a shadow, there's only one thing on my mind as I wipe my fingers afterwards.
Whoa. You did for me there. I felt like I was actually THERE.
Maybe it's no co-incidence that it's not just weddings that are associated with eating, but deaths and wakes too... maybe it's integrally associated in some way, big emotions and food. I'm glad you were there at the end.
And I kind of love the idea of a next of takeaways being nicknamed "Fat Man's Corner".
Ha, thank you. I've no idea where the colloquialism arose, but it should be addressed that way on Google Maps!
Absolutely agreed. The mournful drive from the crematorium, on all occasions I've had that dreadful trip, has always been followed by a Sopranos style sit down, with many extended friends and family (and probably a little too much drink!).
As you rightly said, comfort comes from emotion, of all kinds.
In brighter news, I make an ace risotto 😊
An hour and a bit of slowly adding and manipulating, keeping a side eye upon, whilst keeping on top of the dishes. Radio on in the background, a glass of red on the side...
Yup. Rice dishes are the king.
Thanks, as always, for your share and making me think about things I enjoy thinking about.
I’m trying to cook here and now I can’t see… heartbreaking, hopeful and lovely writing all at the same time
Thank you. Cooking is life.
There is, for reasons lost in time, a very strange New Zealand delicacy. The Cheese Roll.
This is not, despite how it sounds, just a ball of cheese. This is not even a nationwide food of Aotearoa New Zealand.
The Cheese roll is also wryly nicknamed Southland Sushi, as the famously aridly witted Southlanders call them to "fancy up" one of the most ludicrously basic dishes imaginable and sell them to tourists and Aucklanders at enormous markups.
It's specific to the south of the South Island (in Te Reo Maori: Te Waipounamu, the "Greenstone waters", the island named for the precious greenstone that is the treasure of the rivers of the south. (Also, entertainingly, The South Island is Te Waka a Māui, the boat from which the demigod Māui fished up the North Island, literally called Te-Ika-a-Māui (the fish of Māui). (This is further proof that (a) Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson , while big, was not suitably big to play our favourite Demigod, (b) the north island came second, and therefore we of the south have every right to call ourselves The Mainland, even though we know in our heart of hearts that we're really just sitting on Maui's bloody great canoe, but those damned Aucklanders can just STFU, johnny-come-latelys that they are) (c) Te Reo Māori continues to be poetic and lyrical in a way that English struggles with (I mean, how imaginative is "the south island" compared to "the greenstone waters"!), and (d) Māori origin stories are amazing and even Tangata Tiriti (People of The Treaty, the name for the non-indigenous people who came to NZ after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the foundational document by which Maori agreed to share NZ with the British crown) such as myself consider them part of our lively and vibrant culture, (despite the attempts of wanna-be american-style libertarian politicians who are trying to undermine it and the Treaty)))).
Where was I? That sentence was awful. Oh yeah, cheese rolls. They rock. And until I moved to the North Island, I didn't even realise that they were a hyperspecifically regional cuisine.
Strictly speaking I grew up ABOVE the geographic Cheese Roll Line, but still in the South Island, so we saw Cheese Rolls on special occasions. Aucklanders and other North Islanders regularly don't even know they exist. The Cheese Roll line, traditionally the Waitaki river, separates The Deep South of New Zealand and their Antarctician winds, rain and snow from the rest of us. The Deep South is all Scottish ancestry, rolling rhotic Rs, and astonishing landscape that would later be claimed by Lord of the Rings and millions of happy tourists in hiking boots and puffer jackets. Apparently, the south is ALSO home to lots of very cheap white bread, an enormous tasty cheddar cheese industry, and weather cold enough to justify creation of the cheese roll as a soup accompaniment for Autumn, Winter, Spring, and occasional unseasonably cold summer days.
My Mother is an Australian Kiwi, my Dad Irish but a Kiwi since his teens, but they had clearly made a trip south at some point and brought the Secret Recipe for Cheese Rolls back to our home city of Christchurch, the largest city of the South Island and 2nd largest city of NZ. It was a HIT. I am very thankful for their smuggling of the recipe north.
Oh, yeah, the recipe. Alarmingly simple. Grated "tasty" cheddar cheese. The sharper, the better. A tin of evaporated milk. Finely chopped onion if you're fancy. A packet of Maggi brand powdered onion soup, found in every NZ pantry. A dash of mustard if you're REALLY keen. The whitest and cheapest pre-sliced white bread loaf you can find. Butter to baste the hell out of them. Mix everything except the butter and bread in a bowl, melt it down into a goo so it spreads on the bread, roll each slice of bread up into a roll, crusts on if that's your thing, or off if you're serving to royalty and/or fussy children, secure with a toothpick, baste with melted butter, bake in the oven until crispy and lightly browned and the contents are gooey and sexy.
Yes, Sexy. Come on, it's molten creamy flavoured cheese. It's awesome. Yeah, I know they sound stupid. Look, go watch a video of Lizzo reacting to tasting one, I'll wait. https://www.tiktok.com/@new.zealand.2022/video/7095234149165829378
The ULTIMATE comfort food.
Birthday treat? Cheese rolls. Fundraising for the school fair? Cheese rolls. Finger food for a childhood party in the late 70s and early 80s? Cheese rolls. Dad's funeral? Cheese rolls. Depressing winter day? Cheese rolls. Kids won't eat tonight? Cheese rolls. Work snack that will buy you the gratitude of everyone present? Cheese rolls. International Food Fair at my Auckland school to introduce NEW tangata tiriti to NZ cuisine? Cheese rolls. Want to blow a foreigner's mind? Cheese rolls. Want me to do literally anything for you? Cheese rolls. Want to propose to a loved one but need to butter them up first? Cheese rolls and NZ Sav Blanc.
Sweet as, bro. Nice one. Kia ora.
Gooey. Crunchy. Warming from the cockle areas right through to the soul. Soooooooo good.
Aw, man, now I want a snack.
That is the best thing I've read in a long time, and I'm going to have to try making a Cheese Roll now — it sounds outrageously tasty. And also as if it's frowned upon by most cardiac doctors.
My mother was an awful cook! She tried so hard. She’d spend hours standing over the cooker, making god knows what, but we knew that whatever it turned out to be, it was made with love. My sisters, brother, and I would dutifully try to eat every morsel, reassuring her that it was all very delicious while trying to feed as much as we dared to our dog sitting under the table.
She was, however, a fantastic baker! Her cakes, tarts, and choux buns overfilled with delicious chocolate and cream were hits everywhere! But the pudding I remember the most was her treacle tart, a masterpiece always made if one of us was unwell or had just had a bad day. Needless to say, between the four of us, it was made often. Happy days.
I sometimes wonder whether — with home cooks at least — you can only either bake, or make savory food. I can't bake at all ;-) Treacle tart though... god, it's been years since I've had that.
Unfortunately, for my kids, I’m exactly like my mother in the culinary department! On the up side, their father is an amazing cook and their b’day cakes were always amazing! :-)
Meatloaf. But this comes with a story.
When I was a kid, my dad was very much into sailing. Growing up in Perth, Western Australia, the majority of my formative years were spent on or in the water. I was under ten when Dad decided to buy a sailing dinghy, largely so his son could learn to sail on something a little smaller than an actual yacht. We entered one race, which ended about as well as you'd expect a from boat crewed by a middle-aged man and an eight year old. Racing was not my thing.
Recreational sailing, on the other hand, was a joy. Flying across the water, wind, sun, and salt in my face. It was great. For our Christmas holidays we used to travel to the south coast, not far from Margaret River, and rent a little fibro house near the beach. The sailing dinghy, Anaconda, would be towed behind the car and launched almost as soon as we had unpacked.
Of course, being a small boy, sometimes the lure of sandcastles and rock pools was stronger than that of sheets and rudders. So it came to pass that my father headed out alone. Not a worry, he was experienced and not far from land. Mum had a set of binoculars and they'd arranged a signal if trouble arose. Arms crossed, above his head, so there'd be no risk of mistaking a simple wave for a sign or trouble. A perfect system.
Except, of course, in the case of a dislocated shoulder.
Somehow, Dad managed to navigate his way past the small reef and onto the beach, were he exited the vessel and promptly collapsed, to be found by some other holidaymakers and rushed to hospital where he underwent surgery to shorten the tendon in his shoulder. That was the end of the sailing dinghy.
What does this have to do with meatloaf?
Well, our holiday neighbours, a family who always rented the place next to ours (and who had an amazing Meccano set) heard about what had happened and brought around a meatloaf. My mum was, and is, a brilliant cook who introduced me to a huge variety of foods from a very young age but we'd never had meatloaf before. It was amazing. The crust, the moist interior, the slathering of tomato sauce. It wasn't my favourite thing (that honour goes to schnitzel) but it was such a comfort. This was the first time I'd really understood that my father was human, fallible and able to be seriously injured. That was a pretty scary realisation. Somehow this baked slab of mince and vegetables made that ok. Made it a normal part of life.
I don't often eat meatloaf these days, but it's always a comfort when I do.
Wow. There's a hell of a lot wrapped up in that story — and thank you for sharing it. What a strange moment it is when you abruptly realize that a parent isn't (and shouldn't be) some unknowable god-like figure, but is a human just like us... and so needs the kind of care and compassion we do.
I've had good meatloaf in my life, but whenever I make it, it's disappointing. Maybe there's something in it being a comfort food that you have to be given by someone else...
I think you're on to something there. The comfort of being cared for, through food.
Lovely of you to share this. My beloved English dad introduced me to Guinness back in the day. Could not drink one after he passed until I married my late English husband.
Finally enjoyed one again. But will not drink one away from Great Britain still. 🤗
Some things have a right place, and that's often to do with the right people. I'm sorry to hear of both those losses, but glad there's a way of remembering them in a glass.
Thanks for your story about the fried rice, and to the others who have commented for their stories. Food plays such a strong role in our memories, what we perceived then as comfort and how our associations with this can change over the years.
I grew up in a small town in southern Arizona. I am not exaggerating when I tell you it has the best Mexican food you can find in the state. Many people will drive two hours from Phoenix to eat this food. I had great-grandparents, grandparents, a mom, a stepdad, a dad and stepmom, aunts, uncles, cousins and many siblings. A large family and, hence, many losses as time marches on.
There are two major food categories I associate with loss and comfort growing up. One is Mexican food, and the other is Mormon food. Once someone passed away, the loss would be known by everyone quickly. And within hours, friends and neighbors would show up with large boxes containing burros (burritos to anyone else) from the local Mexican food restaurants that would tempt even the most sorrowful appetite. There would be so many boxes lined up — dozens of bean & cheese burros, beef & bean burros, quarts of enchilada sauce and hot sauce. If it was in December, there would also be homemade tamales. I remember the sight as a sign of the love and respect my hometown had for my loved ones who had died. Also, they were the only things any of us wanted to eat at those times. Anything else would have been, well, wrong.
Now for the Mormon side of the family, the funeral service is always followed by a big luncheon prepared by a ladies’ auxiliary called The Relief Society. I’m sure there were many tasty dishes, but the only one that mattered was the potatoes — the Funeral Potatoes to be more specific. It involves hash browns, cheese, sour cream, probably canned cream of whatever soup. Sometimes green chilis. I know, but damn, they were good.
We all live far away now. My siblings and I attended a celebration there this summer and the visit was the first in years for all of us. We ate Mexican food six times in three days. No apologies.
No apologies required :-) And I've had something like those Funeral Potatoes before and they were DELICIOUS. Sometimes the old food is the good food. And I was saying to Andy's comment how it's interesting how food is so intertwined with coming to terms with death... with wakes and food trains and kind friends and neighbors all knowing that's what's needed.
For me it’s a special raunchy dark Trini curry I shared with my dog Lilith. She is gone and it’s off the menu.
Moving along… there’s going to be a Trinidadian/Guyanese food place somewhere in your city, go! Have roti, doubles, and Caribbean style fried rice. I dare you not to fall in love.
Thank you for a good read in a dark time
Thank you :-) And sadly there's not a Caribbean restaurant in town... because a good rice and peas (there used to be a place near us in London that did a fantastic one) almost approaches SFR...
How can this be!! I sorrow for you
My parents were from Texas, and both grew up on farms, so Deep South. My comfort foods from my childhood are fried chicken and pecan pie (made from pecans growing on the trees on my grandmother’s farm). Chaz makes a pecan pie for me at Thanksgiving. My grandmother was Southern Baptist, hence a teetotaler, so Chaz has modified the pecan recipe to add bourbon. Oh, yum.
Knowing how handy Chaz is in the kitchen, I suspect that's AWESOME.
You all could come over the hill for a meal sometime. Soon.
That was lovely. Thank you.
Glad you liked it :-)
My son’s favourite food is fried rice. Always has been. He’s an adult now but I still make it for him as often as possible.
Then we are food family :)