We have a potluck lunch at work once each month, prior to our staff meeting. Each time, one staff member takes charge and declares a theme. We have enjoyed simple themes like "vegetarian" and "Italian" and even "delicious," and also more obscure themes like "opposites." Okay, that one was mine. I encouraged long/short, round/square, hot/cold, sweet/sour, crispy/mushy foods, and was delighted by the creative cooking that came in response.
This month, my co-worker Belinda ordered us to cook "childhood favourites." This prompted a lot of email banter about Kraft Dinner. Strangely nobody actually brought Kraft Dinner. Fiona told me I should bring olives, because olives truly were one of my first favourite foods. Instead, I brought tuna melts, looking for something more universally accepted as a childhood favourite. The rest of our menu included perogies, scallopped potatoes, celery sticks with cheese whiz, celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins, cinnamon buns, chocolate chip cookies, egg salad sandwiches, pizza (that's from Adriana, who grew up with a fabulous Italian cook for a mom, but craved the Canadian food at her neighbour's house) and rice krispie squares. To drink, we had apricot nectar and chocolate milk. It was really yummy. As we ate, we reminisced about favourite candies and cereals and the foods that we wanted our parents to buy or cook but they refused to give us. Those of us with kids agreed that we are all pretty much as hard-nosed or easy-going as our parents were, when it comes to deciding what we'll give our kids to eat. We also all agreed (except for Adriana) that powdered milk tastes horrible. Adriana loved it because her neighbour's mom served it.
After lunch we had our staff meeting. About 30 minutes in, the yawning began. At the one hour mark, we were slurring our words and getting confused. At about 70 minutes the giggling began. Clearly, childhood favourites are not brain food. Perhaps our parents fed them to us to sedate us so we were not so difficult to look after? hmmmm
question: what was your childhood favourite food?
mompoet - olives are good and they do not make you sleepy
1 comment:
What a great idea for a potluck. In our small office we have, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Egyptian, Lebanese, Indian and Greek staff members. I wonder what kind of childhood favourites we would see?
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