Some of my fondest memories are from my family’s road trips up the East Coast from Northern Virginia to Vermont. After getting out of suburbia through the New Jersey Turnpike traffic and into the countryside, I enjoyed passing through quaint towns and acres of farmland, and especially liked it when we’d come across an ice cream, (or creemee as a Vermonter would say) stand alongside the road.

On a few occasions, my family stayed at a bed and breakfast, dairy farm in Southern Vermont. It was on this farm that I learned how to milk a cow and got to witness the birth of a calf. Another highlight of our visits were the delicious breakfasts and dinners that the owner would prepare everyday, which always involved lots of fresh eggs, milk and butter. We would share these bountiful meals with the other guests around a big kitchen table. The corn soufflé was always my favorite dish, so I often asked my mom to make it when we had a special occasion back home. And although it did not taste quite the same as the original version, it’s creamy texture and sweet and savory flavors would still take me back to my memories of being on the farm.

While I did not know at the time that I would get to return to Vermont 14 years later to attend school at Middlebury, I feel fortunate to have had these experiences at a young age and think they are what made me feel connected and drawn to the area. Whenever it’s a windy day on campus or I am out for a run along one of the country roads in Middlebury and I catch a whiff of cow manure from a nearby dairy farm, I am often transported back to my visits as a kid.

I feel kind of silly writing about cow manure and corn soufflé now, but I do think that food memories are important because they highlight how connected we are to places through food.

Through her examples of the L’affaire Mondavi in France and Professor Elder’s maple sugaring in Vermont, Amy Trubek highlights how food is so unique to the place where it comes from. When we talk about “taste of place” she says that we must include in our discussion both the place’s “specific geologic history” and “culture, in a form of a group’s identity, traditions, and heritage” (Trubek 91). If we’re really going to change the way we’re eating and make our food system more sustainable, these aspects of our food should be prioritized. I think that sharing food memories is a way that we can do that, as they put a voice, flavor, or scent to both food and place. If we can create more platforms for these voices to be heard, I think they will have an even greater impact at the food policy level.

The examples that Trubek shares with us are both from traditional, rural agriculture. However, I think that the lessons we learn about food and place from these stories are not only relevant to people living in rural parts of the country, but also to people living in cities—places where cows, vineyards, and maple tree forests are out of sight. With more and more opportunities for urban agriculture, I think we need to be intentional in the same way about how and where we choose to grow. This means that we must continue to value the cultural and physical histories, as well as individuals’ memories, of the land that we use.