Cooking for me is a soul-matter, not just a skill.
I can usually sense when another cook / chef has "it", gets what cooking is really *about*.

Maybe someone cooked for you, maybe you tasted something that transported you in time, maybe you had an experience while cooking that affected you...

Warm our hearts; tell us a story.  

When my older dd was adopted at the age of 15 months, she was escorted to us from S. Korea by a paid escort through our adoption agency. My daughter was very emotionally distraught and severely jet lagged when we met her in the airport. It's one of the hardest things a child can go through, being taken away from someone they love and trust and forced to go with a stranger. This had to happen twice because she had to be taken away from her foster mother upon leaving S. Korea and then the woman that held her for nearly 24 hours in a snuggly while flying overseas. Those 30 minutes or so in the airport is somewhat of a fog in my mind because many people came to the airport to support us and every time we tried to take her from the escort she would freak out. When we did finally get her to the car and in her carseat, which was another new experience for her, in her diaper bag there was a package of partially opened shrimp flavored crackers, so we offered it to her. It was the first thing that stopped her crying.

In the days and weeks that followed, placing dd in a highchair with pretty much any finger food was a comfort to her, although she did fall asleep in it quite a few times. She loved American food, but maybe her foster mother helped prepare her in that way by feeding her American food in Korea. Strangely enough, we found an Asian grocery store and my dh happened to meet an employee there that offered to make authentic seaweed soup for our dd (free) after hearing our adoption story. Of course, our dd devoured it every time. It's ironic, but she was the least discriminate about food after her adoption compared to how my other children were. But now she is the most picky eater of all my kids. Go figure!

My grandmother was an incredible cook, she cooked and baked with love and passion.  My grandmother was a new immigrant and single mother to 3 kids during the thirties which were extremely tough on the Canadian prairies.

My mother and her siblings always used to talk about how they didn't know they were so poor as my grandmother always had an incredible garden and kept chickens, they were always well nourished, but they knew her food was heads and tails above what their friends got during that time.

My grandmother lived with us until she stroked; while she was well we had the best food, stuffed peppers in tomato and cream sauce, incredible soups, only the best in meats and vegetables.

My mother is 85 and 5 years into her journey with Alzheimer's.  She is not able to communicate much any more, but she will often tell me she is going home to Nana's to have dinner and she will lay out a full menu of her favorites that Nana used to cook. When she is able to remember Nana's cooking, she is settled, happy and not anxious.  Nice to know memories that could be over 70 years old that involve food cooked with love can bring Mom moments of peace.

My most memorable meals:
1. a date at a little tucked away French restaurant, stuffed red snapper with a creamy tarragon sauce....the guy..meh, not so much, but my first experience with wonderful French tarragon !!big win!!

2. dinner at my parent's Italian friends, their red sauce for the pasta was amazing and Tony's secret was fennel seed.  One of my favorite herbs ever since.

The only emotions were noises I made while eating these wonderful memorable meals...mmmmmmmmmm, nom nom nom.  There may have been a few tears of joy too.

Quoted from jeanb

My mother is 85 and 5 years into her journey with Alzheimer's.  She is not able to communicate much any more, but she will often tell me she is going home to Nana's to have dinner and she will lay out a full menu of her favorites that Nana used to cook. When she is able to remember Nana's cooking, she is settled, happy and not anxious.  Nice to know memories that could be over 70 years old that involve food cooked with love can bring Mom moments of peace.

Now, if you can replicate those recipes and feed them to your mother, I bet you'd have quite the "moving emotional experience"!  

Funny I cook my nana's recipes but my mother doesn't recognize food anymore so she does not notice the food in front of her as food or as something to eat.  I think she only can taste sweet things and salty things now.  Brain diseases are interesting to say the least.

One of my grandmothers made incredible pickles, I could eat a whole jar. It's hard to remember the rest of her cooking since whe had a massive but not fatal stroke when I was 7.

The other grandmother made everything from scratch. That included incredible biscuits she made with the butter she churned, not a measuring spoon or cup in sight, just a hand full of this and a glug of that. They were great with peach or fig preserves and some fresh cream. One day the younger uncles robbed a wild bee hive and got a tub of honey so dark it was allmost black. Grandma Annie Maude thought for a minute. Then she opened up her flour drawer and added flour, pecans, baking powder, butter, and maybe vanilla and within 20 minutes had some of the best cookies ready with fresh raw milk.

Quoted from gulfcoastguy

One of my grandmothers made incredible pickles, I could eat a whole jar. It's hard to remember the rest of her cooking since whe had a massive but not fatal stroke when I was 7.

The other grandmother made everything from scratch. That included incredible biscuits she made with the butter she churned, not a measuring spoon or cup in sight, just a hand full of this and a glug of that. They were great with peach or fig preserves and some fresh cream. One day the younger uncles robbed a wild bee hive and got a tub of honey so dark it was allmost black. Grandma Annie Maude thought for a minute. Then she opened up her flour drawer and added flour, pecans, baking powder, butter, and maybe vanilla and within 20 minutes had some of the best cookies ready with fresh raw milk.

Grandmas and Food.
A Fantastic Thread idea!  
But, meanwhile, was it a "moving emotional experience"? Or is it so, when you think back on it?

I wanna know about the first grandmother's pickles - what, exactly, she pickled, for starters.
Because, sweetheart, you, I think, have The Gift of Pickling, too.  
I know you also have a real soul for food - it comes across - and I suspect there's indeed some "emotion" behind that.  

Just cucumbers and a quick pickle using vinegar and salt I think. Not sweet, I despise sweet pickles for the most part. As to moving, it was the last thing she fixed for me. Within a couple of months the first stroke put her in bed where she spent the remaining 5 years.