What is Your Special Memory?

Granola &  New Mexican Hiking

       I love how certain items, even food items, evoke certain memories.  As I combined the wheat bran and other ingredients to make my Grammie's homemade granola this morning, I not only had all the special memories of a wonderful grandparent (who often made the granola for me when I was in college and would drop it off when I was home visiting, just before my drive back to college), but this granola also reminds me of my time in New Mexico.  I lived on the Mission compound in the checkerboard portion of the Navajo reservation for a year, while I taught 3rd and 4th grade Navajo students. 
       It was the year after graduation from my undergraduate college and for the first time I lived on my own, with my own little apartment, and 2,000 miles from family.  My favorite activity (other than spending time with my special Navajo family who had "adopted" me into their family life) was hiking amid the sagebrush and climbing to the top of mesas.  As I think of it, I can smell the pungent scent of the sagebrush and can see the yellow flowers on the rabbit brush. 



       My favorite hiking spot was to go to Chaco Canyon (similar to Mesa Verde but without many tourists) and I always had a batch of Grammie's recipe granola in my backpack, along with my water or Gatorade, my hunting knife, and a whistle.  I would hike to the end of a trail or venture to the top of a mesa and eat my lunch of granola as I viewed the spectacular landscape and watched the jack rabbits scatter below.  So, as I make this granola to share with my girls, I long for the time when they will be old enough to hike the steppe country of New Mexico, to wade through arroyos, to rediscover petroglyphs inside a cave, and to meet the wonderful Navajo people that were so good to me when I lived among them.  And until then, I will savor every wonderful memory, as I savor each bite of granola.  What is your favorite memory that is tied to a food item?