alt Hacker NewsI was seven years old in 1969 during the moon landing, with the whole extended family gathered around the enormous TV console. It was a very memorable event for me, but the thing I most remember is that mom made me and my friend a simple BLT with mayo. For some reason it was like a visitation from Jesus for both of us. We spent the next few years making them or begging for them relentlessly. We thought it was our own thing. Over the next fifty years I've tried to recapture that, but never entirely succeeded in reaching the same culinary apogee. Still trying. Every BLT comes with free a flashback to that hot July day. And a remembrance of that best of friends who we lost twelve years ago.
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Show some young children the Apollo 11 movie. (Literally "Apollo 11.")
I was just going to show them the launch, but they all demanded to stay up late, told me to stop fast forwarding, and then had to sit and watch it again with each set of grandparents.
Another thing you can do is make sure critical parts of the Artemis streams (takeoff, approach to the moon, and landing) are on when you have children around. I texted the links to everyone I know.
One thing I know for sure. You won't do it with bagged lettuce. You need a cool head of lettuce. Carry on.
I recently returned to a favorite cafe after a long time away. The amazing food I had many years ago seemed now to be just fine but not memorable.
I think the difference was the context. It was a date with a relationship that was going well. There was a lot of excitement. Now that relationship deteriorated and there is no excitement, and the food isn't as good. Maybe our memories are conflating the two things.
In remembrance of times past...your very own madeleine moment.
Still trying.
Brands matter. See if you can match the brands that your mother used; especially the mayonnaise. Bacon will be harder to match.
In 1969, my family would have made its own mayonnaise, so try that, too.
If I want a flashback to my childhood, it's peanut butter and jelly. But it has to be Skippy peanut butter on Wonder bread with Smuckers jelly, and freezing cold whole milk. Anything deviation doesn't trigger the same brain cells.
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.