I was home for the weekend, looking through childhood memories. I came across some early clues that I’d become entranced with food. Here’s one:

If you can’t tell what this is, it’s Baby Rhea (yes, she was a blond!) crawling around on enormous summer squash set in a pastoral scene with homemade jams.

(Incidentally, this is a result of my mother’s brilliant pre-PhotoShop techniques, which achieved the same effects as hundreds of dollars worth of software with two photo prints and a pair of scissors. Ok, a glue stick may also have been involved, but you have to admit it’s pretty impressive for just using those basic ingredients).

Other early indicators of my culinary intrerests included flashcards I illustrated in kindergarten. One card helped me learn the word “eggplant.” This must have been a pack of cards where I got to choose the words, and of course I chose a few foods. On the back of the card, I depicted this word as a person peering into an open refrigerator. This was a far cry from the singular purple vegetable I had expected to see drawn on the other side.

It’s funny how my perception of things like an eggplant have become so narrow. Why show a context-less object when you could build a whole scene around the idea of it?

Other cards included such concepts as “ever” (a scene in the woods with a princess, I think having to do with the phrase “happily ever after”) and “never” (a redheaded outcast looking longingly at a merry band of blond triplets).

Ah, to be in my 5-year-old brain again!