Daily prompt: Smell you later

Tags

memories, olfactory, postaday2015, smells

Humans have very strong scent memory. Tell us about a smell that transports you

Believe it or not, whenever I get a whiff of Fantastic with oxycleaning bubbles, it transports me back to France, walking down the corridor towards my uncle’s offices off the main house. That particular scent wasn’t originated by Fantastic because when I was little, I remember that smell way before Fantastic found oxyclean, however I buy it now just for the memories triggered.

The minute I smell paper being burned, I am transported back in time to the days that my grandfather in France would take the dogs down to the end of the property and do his daily burning of trash, old newspapers and what not and it is a memory that I cherish.

There is a vegetable soup simmering on the stovetop smell, that is unique to my aunt’s kitchen and I have yet to smell it elsewhere, my nose has searched for that delectable smell over the years and to this day there is only one place that it lives and that is where my aunt and uncle call home.

  

Daily Prompt: Tourist Trap

Tags

memories, postaday2015, tourists

What’s your dream tourist destination — either a place you’ve been and loved, or a place you’d love to visit? What about it speaks to you?

The top picture is of Carro, France, I didn’t take it, I got it off the Internet. I have so many fond memories of this tiny town deep in the South, I just wish that I had more pictures of my cousin’s place. My sister and I spent at least 6 weeks there during each of the 3 summers back when we were growing up and it was such an idyllic time. The Mediterranean Sea was our backyard, literally right at the back of the house and we spent morning and afternoon swimming like fish, we slept like the dead from all of the water activity, we also ate like kings.

The bottom picture is of Hydra, Greece another place that I have lovely memories of, not only of the place but of the company I kept at the time of my visit. I was lucky enough to have spent my time at Hydra with my summer roommate at University of London, Cindy and our friends that we made in the dormitories, Charlene and Rita. I felt such a connection to the island, much more of a connection than what I had felt in Athens or Aegina; maybe it was the simple life that was evident everywhere; there weren’t any cars allowed on the island, everything was transported by donkey and cart, the open markets, the family run cafe and the larger restaurant also family run, the small boutiques and the very hard working people, who after hours played just as hard.

It was very nice to write about these two special places, it warmed my heart and soul to remember walking down the streets in both places, the special meals that I had shared with, either my family or friends, in the restaurants and in my cousin’s house, swimming in the Mediterranean at each place and how it was both the same sea and yet I saw different colors and had different swimming experiences. In Carro, the waves at times were so strong and in Hydra the water was calm, almost like glass.

These past few days have been tough, but with memories like these, it helps keep me optimistic and strong because winter is but a season and before we know it, the sun and warmer temperatures combined will make this winter but a distant memory.

Daily prompt: By Heart

Tags

lyrics, memories, postaday2014, songs

You’re asked to recite a poem (or song lyrics) from memory — what’s the first one that comes to mind? Does it have a special meaning, or is there another reason it has stayed, intact, in your mind?

Lyrics or at least parts of them never have a problem staying intact in my head. My memory has been deteriorating progressively over the past few years, but give me some rhythm and a beat and the words come back to me without too much hassle.

One of the first songs that I remember because I used to play the record over and over again when I was young is a song called ”
Me and my Shadow” I loved the lyrics back then so much
Me and my shadow
my shadow and me
we’re always together
as close as we can be
we like painting pictures on
the walls and the floors
like rabbits and birds and that’s
not all
wherever we go
we got company
me and my shadow
my shadow and me

Maybe I haven’t forgotten because I used to play it during my alone time when I was happy and relaxed, listening to songs that I loved with a book in my hand. I hear the song play back in my head and I flash back to the old apartment where I would sit in the dining room on the old sofa next to the old record player while my father was at work and my mother and my sister were probably watching t.v in my parent’s room. Good happy memories.

Eating down memory lane

Tags

memories, postaday2014, restaurants

My mother and I had such a lovely time last night. My hubby was busy with his many business meetings in the city and so my mother and I were left to our own devices. When I was younger; my parents, my sister and myself were introduced to a fantastic Thai restaurant called Jaiya in Elmhurst Queens by a good family friend. We discovered Siam spring rolls, a little different from the Vietnamese spring rolls that we adored, but the difference didn’t diminish how much we enjoyed them. Another dish that became an instant favorite was called Naked Shrimp; shrimp grilled and served as a refreshing salad served with a piquant citrus dressing, but the ultimate dish that enthralled us was blue crabs with Jaiya’s special sauce. We started this love affair with Jaiya in the late 1970’s and I think that we actually took its existence for granted because when we found our beloved Jaiya closed back in 2003, right around the time we lost my father, we couldn’t believe it. We were so sad during that time, having Jaiya no longer around seemed like an added blow to our devastating loss, my father adored the crabs with special sauce even though he was frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t quite figure out how to replicate it.

Jaiya had moved out to Long Island, however we soon found out that they had a restaurant in downtown Manhattan. At first we were excited, but after quite a few tries, we were disappointed by the difference in quality from the old restaurant. My mother and I had resigned ourselves to never eating those delectable crabs ever again. Those were not happy thoughts, I assure you.

So when my mother mentioned that Jaiya had opened a new location on the upper Eastside we were a little skeptical after having been so disappointed by the other location. We were nervous about being let down once again. So before leaping into another pit of dashed culinary hopes, my mother asked me to research and lo and behold, Jaiya has a wonderful and appetizing website. We perused their menu and found that they in fact offered the same appetizers as the old Jaiya and (Bonus!) crabs with special sauce. My mother was a little skeptical because instead of offering the eastern blue crab, we saw that it was the Dungeness crab, native to the Northwest. So to assuage her worries I researched the difference between both crabs and we both learned something. The blue crab is sweeter and smaller, but the dungeness holds up well to the least amount of handling since their delicate flavor is what you want to appreciate, however they do lend themselves exceptionally well to the introduction of sauces.

So all of this research settled it, we were off on a mission to see if we could recapture our culinary memories at the newest Jaiya location. We got there at 6:30 and were immediately seated. The decor was nice and the service very professional, courteous and swift. My mother ordered Larb and I ordered Dancing Shrimp as appetizers and we were both really happy with our choices. I have made Larb for my mother before and so has my sister, I introduced them to the dish and Jaiya’s version, while a little different than mine, was very well executed, my mother finished it all. My Dancing Shrimp was excellent, this dish was different from the Naked Shrimp in that it was served “raw” the shrimp had been cooked by the citrus dressing, it was delicate, full of intense flavors. Yummy!

And then they came, our crabs with special sauce, and we were not disappointed. At one point my mother said that she was grateful for the very dim lighting because we were making pigs of ourselves. The crabs are served in the sauce, broken up and there is no other way to eat them but with your fingers and sucking all of the sweet meat out of the broken leg pieces and sucking the sauce off of the shell. Basically it is a sucking frenzy but I didn’t care, it was unbelievably delicious and brought me back to those wonderful memories of us eating together in Elmhurst Queens all those years ago.

Daily prompt: Our house

Tags

apartments, memories, postaday2014

What are the earliest memories of the place you lived in as a child? Describe your house. What did it look like? How did it smell? What did it sound like? Was it quiet like a library, or full of the noise of life?Tell us all about it, in as much detail as you can recall.

The apartment on 24th Street is the second home that we lived in when I was little. The first was also on 24th Street, a little ways down the street, but I don’t remember it. I do remember the day that we moved to the second apartment that I called home for over ten years. I remember standing on the front stoop and watching my father and his friend, I’m assuming that it was Raymond, carrying our couch down the sidewalk and then up the stoop. I don’t know how young I was when we moved, maybe four years old. But later on in time, I remember my mother getting me ready in the mornings for kindergarten. The kitchen sink was a deep sink and she used to give me a quick sink bath and dress me quickly because our apartment was so cold, the kitchen was the warmest room with the oven door open with the oven on and the radiator was right there by the window. I remember my thick wool tights and my black and white saddle shoes.

My mother used to bundle my little sister and I in footed pajamas and a second pair of fluffy footed pajamas to keep us toasty during the winter nights. I remember one time after my little sister and I had helped Mister Brunner, our landlord, to shovel the stoop and the sidewalk after a snowstorm; my mother peeled us out of our snow pants, boots, gloves, scarfs and hats and plunked us down on the floor in front of the old fashioned t.v housed in the buffet console, covered us in a blanket and then fed us both Farina cream of wheat to warm us back up.

Our apartment was cold in the winter and steaming in the summer, but it was a nice apartment; it had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room and a dining room and of course a bathroom. I have great memories of that apartment, we had space, we were comfortable and we were lucky to have the best landlords in the world, not everyone can say that. This apartment was where my parents held their fantastic dinner parties, it was in this apartment that I started experimenting with making Jello desserts and pudding desserts, I then graduated to actual baking. It was in this apartment’s kitchen that I “created” chocolate toast; buttering toast and sprinkling Nesquick over the melted butter, I was eight or nine maybe when I made them for myself and my little sister.

Memories are what make an apartment a home.

Daily prompt: Always something there to remind me

Tags

memories, molding clay, postaday2014

A song comes on the radio and instantly, you’re transported to a different time and place. Which song(s) bring back memories for you and why? Be sure to mention the song, and describe the memory it evokes.

Anytime I hear a song from Foreigner, The Dooby Brothers, Chicago or even Leo Sayer, I am transported back to the early to mid seventies and my father’s atelier or workshop if you will. I see the image of my mother sitting at one of the worktables with her hair protected by a kerchief, wearing dishwashing rubber gloves, holding a long file and filing off the ragged edges of pewter candlesticks that my father made in his atelier. My father alway worked to music, he loved music, all music and in those days Foreigner was everywhere on the radio as were the Dooby Brothers. I can see my father wearing his protective eyewear holding a huge ladle and dipping it into the huge cauldron full of molten pewter and pouring the hot liquid into his molds. I remember feeling scared and nervous for my father that he might hurt himself, but he never did. I would help my mother with the filing always listening to the music. I know that my little sister was there somewhere, I just can’t see her in the distant fog of my memory. These memories date to when I was five or maybe six years old. My father had his pewter atelier for quite a while, at least ten years and those ten years were very lean economically. My father only made money when he opened his restaurant with his partner and that happened when I was a teenager.

I intellectually know that we were poor back in those days of the pewter atelier, but I didn’t know it or feel it then. Those memories of my parents being together at the atelier were happy ones, my mother was so very adorable with her kerchief on her head and those yellow dishwasher gloves, wearing one of my father’s old dress shirts. My father was very talented, I remember watching him shape modeling clay into new molds for new pewter products such as plates, charger plates and different candle stick holders. He made so many beautiful things with his hands, he was an artist in everything that he did. These memories are very cherished.

Daily prompt: New Sensation

Tags

eighties, hair styles, memories, postaday2014

Ah, sweet youth. No matter whether you grew up sporting a fedora, penny loafers, poodle skirts, bell-bottoms, leg-warmers, skinny jeans, Madonna-inspired net shirts and rosaries, goth garb, a spikey mohawk, or even a wave that would put the Bieber to shame, you made a fashion statement, unique to you. Describe your favorite fashions from days of yore or current trends you think are stylin’.

This post is mostly about hair, my hair and I’m sorry Christine, but your hair as well. Christine is my little sister and we sported the same hairdo’s back in the 70’s and 80’s; being siblings we have more or less the same type of hair. Christine’s hair is blonde and much curlier, but I can be just as frizzy as she, even though my hair is more on the wavy side.

We were both guilty of the mullet; honestly I think that everyone at one point or the other sported a mullet during the early 80’s. The 80’s weren’t very fashion friendly either in terms of hair or fashion. I remember shoulder pads, bright makeup, head-bands, leg-warmers and the skin tight jeans. I would not want to revisit the 1980’s on a runway or at a hair stylist show; the eighties were over the top; big hair, big makeup and big everything.

My sister and I weren’t really guilty of the fashion mistakes, we erred toward the more classic styles. We liked buttoned down shirts, tailored pants, we outgrew the tight jeans phase pretty quickly, and I did sport hats from time to time, I had a favorite Greek fishing hat at one point.

That was high school in the eighties for myself and my sister, we survived it pretty well I think. It’s funny what memories old family pictures dredge up when you dig them out of your mother’s photo box.

Back in time

Tags

A Ha, acceptance, fitting in, high school, memories, music videos, postaday2013

What song transports you back in time?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TD6LEw1zsw

The Norwegian band A Ha with their U.S hit Take Me On brings me back instantly to my teenage years. Not quite back to my memories of high school; I didn’t particularly enjoy high school. I loved the learning part of school, just didn’t care for the social hierarchy and the silly games of fitting in and which group deemed you acceptable and which didn’t. It took me three years before I fit in anywhere, but this song made me forget all that; it’s catchy, upbeat and his voice strums the strings of your heart just right; where it puts a smile on your face, a hum in your throat and a spring in your step.

The video is also quite clever and back then it was a rare treat to actually see music video’s so this one really stood out.

Memories of pets gone by

Tags

dogs, friends, memories, pets, pictures, postaday2012

Hannah and Rex

Rex and Hannah and me

Rex

Marshall

Rex and Marshall

Rex playing with Gizmo

Marshall tolerating Gizmo

Rex taking care of Gizmo

Poor Jump and Gizmo

Me and Gizmo

Marshall and Gizmo

Rex

Jump and Gizmo

Jump our bunny and Gizmo Debbie’s puppy

Rex

Marshall our first dog who lived to 16

My best friend Debbie sent me these pictures and I wanted to share them with you. It’s very easy to get caught up in the holiday fervor and buying frenzy that we can sometimes forget to stop, take a breath and remember those who aren’t with us anymore. Gizmo is still with us, he’s about six years old now but he and my best friend moved away last year to another town an hour away and I miss them. I was so lucky to have them next door for over ten years that their going left a big hole in my daily life.

Marshall, Rex and Jump were extraordinary pets and we were blessed to have them for as long as we did. Jump the bunny lived to twelve and the pictures of Gizmo trying to have his way with poor Jump are the only times that we ever saw Jump actually jump. He was the most good-natured little bunny and the baby girl treated him like her very own toy bunny, sneaking him up into her room at night and sleeping with him. He was so very sweet. Marshall or grandpa as we liked to call him was a character. He was the patriarch of the group and he knew it. Rex adored him as did we all. Rex as you must know by now was almost human, he was so gentle and responsible. I miss them all.

I remember it well

Tags

memories, postaday2012, scenes, scents, sense, sight, sound

• Write down the first sight, sound, smell, sensation and scene from your life that come to mind with just sixty seconds for each. See which of those you’d most like to continue to write about, and where it leads you.

• Remembering
• My face with my big brown eyes, brown freckles that run across my nose, my wild thick crazy wavy hair and full lips, a lot of untamed features inhabiting the space on my head. The smell of vegetable soup that wafts in the entryway of my Tont-ton’s house, that smell signifies home, hearth, love and family. I can still hear that woodpecker waking me up in the house from hell at 6:00 every morning like clockwork. I really detested that woodpecker, he was right outside my window, the babies slept right through it but I couldn’t for the life of me, the rat-a-tat-tat felt like hammer blows against the house he was so close. That darn woodpecker.

  The smell of the vegetable soup beckons me to the kitchen and there she is, Tantine, or at least her back, she turns around with a wet tomato in her hand and I walk quickly to her to kiss her hello, I can tell that she is so happy to see me. She turns back with her tomato, puts it aside and continues to rinse the others, all the while asking me how I am doing and how are the babies. Her hands are busy peeling the tomatoes and then the onions. She starts to slice both of them to make her tomato and onion salad, she sprinkles salt and pepper and pours red wine vinegar and peanut oil over the tomatoes and onions and pushes it off to the side to let it marinate for a bit before lunch. She then continues with the other preparations for the rest of our lunch.