Fred Aiken Writing

Tag: childhood

June 21, 2024

Childlike Food

Daily writing prompt
Which food, when you eat it, instantly transports you to childhood?
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For all the wrong reasons: canned asparagus. It will forever be engraved into the part of the brain that controls sensory memories. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t actually had canned asparagus since I turned 15. But it was very much a part of my childhood culinary misadventures.

The smell of it is absolutely putrid. It was vomit-inducing with a mushy texture and the aroma of diarrhea fermenting in formaldehyde. I really, truly detest whoever thought canning asparagus would be a good idea. In fact, a majority of canned vegetables are quite disgusting. Though I suppose my biggest issue with canned asparagus is that it prevented me from discovering the true delight and deliciousness of fresh asparagus.

When my wife and I got together in college, within the first couple of months of us dating we had gone through the list of likes and dislikes in our awkward attempt to get to know one another, and obviously one of the main categories that we had covered was food likes and dislikes. When I let her know that I had a bad experience with asparagus as a child and thus did like it, she was perplexed. She couldn’t understand how someone could not like her favorite vegetable.

So, I told her about the canned asparagus. I told her about how my parents would make me eat it, and I would not be excused from the table until I ate every single vegetable, which for the most part was not a problem until it came to canned asparagus. The canned asparagus, I recalled, was horrid, putrid, and just the worst vegetable one could imagine. And so, I had assumed that all asparagus tasted like canned asparagus without ever questioning my assumption.

That is until my wife, who at the time was just my girlfriend because we had only been dating a couple of months and it would have been weird if we married in our early twenties, put me on to the fresh stuff. The real asparagus. We waited until asparagus went on sale at Kroger because we were still broke college kids, and fresh asparagus is rather pricey, all things considered. And we bought some fresh asparagus when it went on sale for 30% off, and she taught me how to cook the asparagus in both an oven and on the stove. She showed me how to properly season them, because that’s the thing, canned asparagus has absolutely no seasoning. It’s just mushy gunk.

By the end of the night, I had nearly eaten my weight in asparagus; it was that good. It helped the fact that I was incredibly thin in my early twenties. Some might even say slightly malnourished due to my poor overall dietary habits. But my girlfriend at the time turned me on to fresh asparagus, so it felt like I was starting to make some good decisions for once in my life…at least when it came to food.

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that my college girlfriend introducing me to fresh asparagus made me want to marry her, because again, we had barely been dating one another and that would have been kinda weird. But after a few years, and with us both having graduated college, the fresh asparagus aspect certainly helped in my decision making to get down on one knee after taking her to a fancy restaurant and asking her to spend the rest of her life with me. It’s a plus knowing that I will get to have fresh asparagus rather than that mushy canned crap until the day I die. Or at least until the day in which climate change decimates most crops and possibly takes out asparagus altogehter.

Aside from canned asparagus, there’s also hotdogs. Unlike canned asparagus, I absolutely loved hotdogs as a child. To be honest, from the age of four to about seven, I probably overdid it on eating my share on eating the world’s supply of hotdogs. I ate so many hotdogs in such a short period of my young life that I ended up getting sick of them and couldn’t stand the sight or smell of them for the next fifteen or so years later.

Still to this day, I’d probably say I eat my one, possibly two, hotdogs per year. Far fewer as many that I ate before I had all my permanent teeth in. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s kinda odd that I grew up thinking that I might eat hotdogs for the rest of my life, breakfast, lunch and dinner, but then ended up not really enjoying them as much; and on the flip side, I thought I would never have to touch a single asparagus, canned or otherwise, for the remainder of my life once I had the agency to choose, but now I’m having fresh asparagus at least two or three times a month.

I don’t know if these foods necessarily transport me to childhood, but they both remind me of aspects of my childhood and the sensations of being young and how I went about making culinary decisions that seem very emblematic of my childhood, I suppose you could say.

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June 5, 2024

I Dream of Chocolate

Daily writing prompt
Describe your dream chocolate bar.
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When I was eight, I had a vivid dream, perhaps a lucid dream, that has stayed with me ever since, a dream that sparked an unending quest for the perfect, most peculiar chocolate bar. It was a rainy autumn evening, and I was tucked in bed, the patter of rain on the window lulling me to sleep. In my dream, I found myself in a magical candy shop, where the air was thick with the scent of cocoa and an unexpected hint of elusive ingredients my mind was too inexperienced to fully comprehend.

The shopkeeper, a kindly old man with twinkling eyes, beckoned me forward. He handed me a bar wrapped in iridescent foil, its weight heavy and promising in my small hands. “This,” he said, his voice a warm whisper, “is the Chocolate of Dreams.”

I unwrapped it slowly, the foil crinkling under my fingers, revealing a rich, dark chocolate that glistened in the soft light of the shop. As I took a bite, the world around me seemed to transform. The chocolate was unlike anything I had ever tasted—it was as if the essence of every happy memory and comforting moment had been distilled into this single bar, but with an eccentric twist.

The first layer was a smooth, dark chocolate, but infused with the unexpected flavor of bergamot and sea salt. It melted on my tongue, releasing a burst of flavors that reminded me of breezy summer afternoons spent by the sea, the salt air mingling with the aroma of blooming citrus trees.

As I bit deeper, I encountered a layer of creamy avocado mousse, its rich, buttery texture blending seamlessly with the dark chocolate. It was reminiscent of lazy Sunday lunches after church, where the smoothness of ripe avocados met the savory satisfaction of freshly baked bread.

And as I kept eating I discovered more and more flavors. Hidden within the mousse were tiny, crunchy bits of candied lavender petals, adding a delightful crunch that evoked memories of walking through fields of wildflowers, each step releasing a fragrant symphony underfoot.

The very center of the bar held the most surprising element—a smooth, velvety ganache infused with the subtle warmth of saffron and the unexpected zest of wasabi. It was a gentle heat that spread through me, like the excitement of a new adventure, or the thrill of an unexpected discovery.

As I finished the last bite, the dream began to fade, but the taste and the feeling of that chocolate bar stayed with me. I woke up with a sense of longing and wonder, and an insatiable desire to find that perfect, peculiar confection. For a brief moment, my young mind thought the Chocolate of Dreams could be real. But I also had a fever of one hundred and six, so it could have been a hallucination.

Though despite knowing that it was all a dream, and one that I had as a child and with a fever, I still hold out a small inkling of hope that one day I’ll find that perfect, indescribable, sugary-delight that I know as the Chocolate of Dreams.

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May 27, 2024

Inter-Through-the-Net

Daily writing prompt
Do you remember life before the internet?
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Yes, but only vaguely, and perhaps not entirely. I’m one of those millennials that grew up when the personal computer wasn’t quite yet in everyone’s household. Granted, the internet was created before I was born in 1983. But I’m fairly certain it’s use and functionality wasn’t all that user friendly until the late nineties and 2000’s with the explosion the tech companies.

So I guess I’m more so remembering a time in which the internet was around, but not yet a part of daily social interactions and life. I was more so apart of the generation that transitioned from the internet and computer tech being a kinda niche that only a small population really interacted with to suddenly there being multiple computers in every household and then in everyone’s pocket via smartphones.

A bulk of my childhood was during the 1990’s, and the internet definitely played a role in shaping culture and how we interacted with one another. But as a kid, or at least in my household, I was still restricted from using the internet, at least until I turned 15 or 16, which was about in the mid-2000’s.

I do remember people talking about the internet and its innovation the same way that a lot of analysts and money-folk are now talking about artificial intelligence. I’m sure there will always be some surface-level changes, but at the core of it, I don’t think people change all that much, despite what new, shiny tool comes out.

But from what I can recall, as the internet was starting to become more and more a part of daily life, there always seemed to be a sense of mistrust and acrimony held towards it. For example, as a student in the 2000’s, it was frowned upon to use Wikipedia or most any internet-based article as a reference in any of our papers. For good reason, though. Data collection and scraping for information was in its infancy, so often internet articles and digital encyclopedias weren’t held in as high of esteem as good ole fashioned books and print news articles. It seems a bit silly to think back on it, because there were plenty of news sources and books that printed false and/or misleading information all the time. I suppose the internet just led to the proliferation of it 1000x over.

Though at the core of the question, I don’t think I can really speak all too well to a time before the internet, since like I said, the internet has been around in some form or fashion since 1983, and I was born in the late 80’s. So, even though I might not have had a personal connection or interaction with the internet while growing up, there were certainly instances in which the internet was influencing and affecting life during that time that more than likely influenced my life.

I will say, though, that it was definitely a period in time in which people’s digital and technological literacy was far from where it is today. When teachers were tasked with introducing us to computers and how to use them, it essentially amounted to teaching us how to use computers as if they were typewriters. In essence, most of my computer science classes were basically learn how to type as quickly as possible, which isn’t necessarily a bad skillset to have, since I really can’t stand how slowly some of my older colleagues take to type out a few sentences. But it wasn’t until college that I started being able to explore the different computer languages and how to utilize them for my benefit.

In terms of the benefits to cost ratio, then I probably couldn’t really speak too much to that. I would think someone that grew up pre-1980’s would have a more definitive clarity as to what and how society changed going from no internet to internet in everything, including internet in your appliances, like fridges and microwaves. From the people that I know that came from that generation, it seems like there’s always a consensus that time before the internet and the personal computer was a lot simpler and easier of a time.

Though I guess they might also be neglecting to remember the fact that the world was on the brink of nuclear war when the two superpowers, the US and Soviets, went back and forth on the will-they-won’t-they either annihilate all of humanity or kiss and makeup for the good of the species. All of which hardly seems like it was an easier and less-stressful time in which to come of age.

I’m kinda curious as to whether or not there could have been a Cold War had there been internet back in the 60’s and 70’s when the Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation was at its peak. It’s obviously only a curious thought experiment, but I think an argument could definitely be made that the introduction of the internet in the 1980’s led to events like the Cold War going through its natural progression at a lot quicker of a pace and coming to a conclusion faster than it would have had the internet not been around.

Maybe…or maybe not. I mean, it is a theory.

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