Happy Halloween and Haunting Foods!

First off, HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I hope you have a fun day today!

I blogged earlier this month about being a coward who mostly avoids scary books and movies, but on Halloween, it is time to confess what REALLY scares me

I am haunted by…

Food.

Or more specifically, foods that I’ll never get to eat again. 

I have had some wonderful food in my life time. My mom was a great cook. She made yummy food. I can remember coming home from school for lunch (oh yes, I did!) and my glasses would fog over from the transition from cold to warm, but my sniffer worked just fine. Chili and homemade bread. Happy sigh. I’m sure we didn’t have it every day and it wasn’t cold every day, but this is the memory that lingers and haunts.

And yes, chili and homemade bread haunts me because my mom isn’t around to make it anymore and I can’t eat chili anyway. Beans and my body don’t deal well with each other. Oh, and my mom’s cinnamon rolls. My sister and I have tried to duplicate how she made them and can’t quite hit the mark. Missing is the special magic that is from mom.

She made some for me the spring before she died and then forgot to give some more to me when I left. She called me and was sad. I should have gone back.

There are other foods that haunt me. Hubs and I lived in Texas for quite a while and yes, there are foods that haunt me from there.

There was a place south of Kingsville called The King’s Inn. They taught me to love avocados. It sounds crazy but wow, what they did to the avocados was pure magic. And there is a lemon meringue pie that my daughter told me about that I never got to try. Sigh.

Over time, the hubs and I moved to New Orleans. Oh. My. Goodness. 

Our first day in New Orleans we found this pasty place (whose name I can’t spell from memory) with the BEST IN THE WORLD chocolate cream puffs. They were bigger than a Big Mac, stuffed with chocolate pudding made by angels and real cream. We would make trips there as often as we could and then one day?

They were gone.

The owners had retired and sold it. 

Nevermore. 🙁

I dream about them sometimes, but I always wake up before I can take a bite. 

Other pastries that haunt me?

*Chocolate donuts in Bath (England)

* Cream cheese pastries they used to make at Randall’s in Houston

* Cream horns from this little French pastry shop in Houston

* White chocolate bread pudding (I could still get this if I could get my tush on a plane, but I can’t do it anymore. I have a recipe but it doesn’t taste the same without their bread.)

* The cookie store in the mall in New Orleans whose name I don’t recall, but whose cookies I will not soon forget.

And non-pastries that haunt me:

* Four cheese pasta at Semolina’s.

* Bread and oil for dipping that my sister and I found at this little place in Victoria (Canada). Yeah, bread haunts me, too. 

So my “haunted” Halloween is about food. Lol What “haunts” you today?

Perilously yours,

Pauline