Comment by EvanAnderson
3 days ago
I have a similar thing here, albeit not tied to as vivid a memory of a day or of people-- just a memory of food.
I've been chasing a "white whale" bacon / egg / cheddar on grilled Texas toast sandwich I made 20-ish years ago that I've never been able to replicate. I didn't keep track of the particular bacon or cheddar I used, and I don't recall if the eggs were the farm co-op eggs we used to get or plain old grocery eggs. I should have taken notes but didn't.
It's probably a silly thing to do, but I keep fairly meticulous notes about food I make now (including weighing-out ingredients on a kitchen scale). I don't want to have another experience like my mythical sandwich.
My wife has a good point about my quest: I can't replicate my hunger level that day. That got me paying attention to how hunger effects food enjoyment. I now make a point of planning my eating ahead of special meals to maximize enjoyment. It's shocking, to me, how much a little hunger makes food better.
>That got me paying attention to how hunger effects food enjoyment.
I cured my lifelong pickiness thanks to an excessively long diet. The pickiness had tempered itself somewhat over the years, but my food choices were still quite limited compared to your average person.
On that diet, I lost about 50 pounds over 8 months and got to the leanest I've ever been, probably under 15% bodyfat. I knew better than to diet that long and the negative effects of diet fatigue, but dammit, I was determined and had to keep going!
The last few months I was constantly ravenous, tired, having trouble sleeping and absolutely obsessed with food. A few weeks later was Xmas dinner with the family, and when I arrived, I was shocked to discover that EVERYTHING on the table looked absolutely delicious to me. Foods I wouldn't have even imagined trying before. My pickiness was so severe, even attempting a bite would have previously caused a vomit response. I ate everything on that table that year and enjoyed nearly all of it. My family was stunned! It was like a dam broke, and now I am willing to try just about anything. It's been a great increase to my quality of life.
As an aside, I always hated hearing "What would you do if you were starving?" growing up. My contention was that if I were truly starving, any pickiness would disappear quite quickly. I mean people have resorted to cannibalism during times of famine! This experience completely validated my theory.
> It's probably a silly thing to do, but I keep fairly meticulous notes about food I make now (including weighing-out ingredients on a kitchen scale). I don't want to have another experience like my mythical sandwich.
Perhaps you do want those experiences, actually. Would your memory of this sandwich be as sweet if you were able to replicate whenever you want? How much of the seasoning here comes from its rarity?
I will concede that you may have a point.
There are things in my life I carefully mete out because I don't want to "burn out" then novelty. I'd like to think I could do that in this case, but I don't know how it would change the memory.
I feel strongly that our memories are a "lossy destructive read" type of mechanism (core memory that "forgets" to write-after-read sometimes). I often think about how I'm permuting memories I recall, even as I'm enjoying recalling them.
I agree with all of this. I have memories where it's clear to me that my memory of the original thing has faded and I am mostly remembering the previous reminiscences of it.
In college I did an apple fast twice. Only eat apples and drink water for 3 days. You have to be careful doing this because you can end up very dehydrated. Whatever you eat after the 3rd day is the best meal of your life even though it's typically very simple. I would usually have something like a soup or very basic sandwich, it was still usually the most tasty thing I had ever eaten.
I find some freeze dried noodles and sauce in a mylar pouch are amazing after a long alpine hike, same with music; you have some luminous time in your life and the music you discovered around this time stays with you. God speed to your sandwich journey!
That reminds me of a day almost 30 years ago where I spent my last money and had a big pizza gyros. I went from starving to completely satiated. It was absolutely glorius. I’m still a big fan of pizza Gyros thanks to this special memorable occasion.
Food matters.
If you've ever done an extended fast (at least 36 hours, but ideally 60+) you'll know how rich your senses of smell and taste can be. In something as basic as a baked potato you can taste all sorts of nuances of sweetness, nuttiness and savoriness. Something like a steak explodes with such flavor as to border on a psychedelic experience.
This reminds me of a quote, "hunger is the best condiment".