Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I was chased around the house by my dad when I was very little, to try plain yogurt - no other flavors were available in those days! Anyway when my dad finally caught up with me, they had substituted vanilla ice-cream and forced it into my mouth. The rest of the family laughed but I cried for ages because I had been tricked - and it took me months to even go near yogurt again.

A pleasant memory I have of when I was very small was of freshly baked bread being delivered to our house, and as a treat, my mother would cut a thick slice off the end, slather it with butter and sprinkle sugar over it. I can still remember the different textures of crunchy crust, soft squishy (sometimes still warm) breadcrumb, creamy butter and crunchy, sweet sugar. Mmmm

Oh, and another memory.... Being woken late on Easter Saturday to go to midnight church service then upon our return (and several weeks of fasting) being given Greek Easter soup which basically consists on the entrails of lamb - you know, liver, spleen, tripe, intestine, etc .YUCK - still hate it! The good thing was that the rest of the whole lamb would have been put onto a spit ready for placing over an open hot charcoal spit and the family would take turns in turning the spit to roast for Easter Sunday lunch (before the advent of electric rotisseries). Fantastic.

I have two memories from around the same time (age 3?). One was poking around in my dad's home "office" - it was a bunch of shelving put together with cinder blocks - and finding his chocolate stash tucked into one of the blocks. Another was pulling Friskies out of the cat's dish to see what they tasted like. (At least it wasn't the wet food!)

my brother and sister and i were 4,3, and 2 years of age. my mother made us cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, instead of the usual PB&J. the three of us sat at the table and cried, because she forced us to eat them, and was very cranky about it (um, understandable, my brother and sister and i were 4,3, and 2 years of age, and she worked full-time!) and made us eat them. so many tears were spilt at the table that day.

now, of course, i would make a deal with the devil if i could only eat philadelphia cream cheese by the pound without becoming a gargantuan and heart-disease riddled mess.

still, i don't think i can do a cream cheese and jelly sandwich :)

i was about two years old and it was an orange sherbet push-up from the ice cream truck. i remember hearing the ice cream truck music and ran outside with my grandmother. i remember it melting all over my hands and face as i ate it.

my other food related memory was from about the same time period. i was at the store with my brother and i saw one of those big ass lollipops, you know the ones that were round and flat and had different colors spiraling outwards. i remember yanking on my brother's hand and asking him to buy it for me.

funny that my two earliest food memories are of sweets, and i really don't eat those now. i recently had an orange sherbet and the first thing i thought of was that ice cream truck.

Unfortunately what I believe is my earliest food memory is rather unpleasant. I was allergic to red food coloring, which my mom discovered after feeding me jell-o water as an infant (don't ask, I have no idea why and is probably the reason I have such a vicious sweet tooth) and found red splotches on the carpet where I vomited said jell-o water.

She ceased feeding me all things red until I was 3 or 4 when she mistakenly fed me Trix cereal, with red food coloring. I proceeded to vomit in the back seat of our neighbors car, an ugly and messy reminder for my mother. I remember it clearly and can't stand the sight or smell of Trix, Fruity Pebbles or Froot Loops to this day. Even though I did outgrow the allergy I can't bring myself to eat those cereals because of the barfing incident in Jean's car.