It’s September and there’s definitely something in the air. “Oh, what a beautiful day.”
A new season has arrived, new faces, new ideas. It’s Ponte Vedra Beach at its best and it has been this way since the very beginning. It’s an excitement of sorts, an enthusiasm, a blue-sky feeling; and in the marshes along the canal, stories of “Diego Ranch” are being retold, and footpaths leading to the old “Spanish Dam” at the lower end of Neck Road are being rediscovered and mapped. Who actually knows with any degree of certainty what the Florida Coast Line Canal and Transportation Company cut through in 1908? Archaeological surveys were rarely conducted a hundred and some odd years ago and Florida’s most significant cultural history has always lain just beneath the surface. Architect Bill Morgan taught us this. As kids, we were paying attention. There is “a bright golden haze on the meadow.”
“Oklahoma” made the lyrics famous because the words, the melody and the imagery inspired emotion in 1955. The air is experiencing those first crisp drops in morning humidity. The clouds are distinctively First Coast, animated and dense. Outdoor living is beginning to return after summer’s heat, and many are using this time to get lost in thought. “Everything is going my way.”
It’s said that taste and smell are second and third to music as a cue for memories in everyday life. With music, both younger and older adults produce more spontaneous memories related to their personal life stories. Everyone loves a good story. Emotional valence, they call it, that wonder thing that signals “mostly positive” feelings triggered by music. That might be challenged by Proust’s “madeleine” intuition, but it’s what was found in a 2023 diary study in the British Journal of Psychology.
In Proust’s “Swann’s Way,” a taste of a small cake dipped in lime-blossom tea becomes a key unlocking a childhood house, a garden, an aunt, the whole weather-of-life that voluntary memory could not reach. The analysis continues. “Smell and taste head almost straight to the amygdala and hippocampus. Flavor can feel like time travel.”
A photograph of a place can perform similarly. A canal, two palms, a modest house, a cloud formation worthy of record: this is the Florida madeleine. We don’t need to remember the particular morning or afternoon willfully or on purpose, but the memories will arrive involuntarily, complete and attached to something else entirely, something worth capturing, preserving and sharing with others.
Marjorie Rawlings, in her “Cross Creek Cookery” from 1942, understood the memory-keys well and why the liminal blank is so worthy of filling with the ingredients of our own making.
Proust and Rawlings only a paragraph apart? What kind of guest column is this? Bear with me. Fragrance has a privileged anatomical route to our brain. Food nostalgia and the aroma of cooking reliably trigger warm, social feelings that some describe as the feelings of home. “Cook a batch of chocolate chip cookies 45 minutes before the showing” is good real estate advice. The smell of breakfast in the morning jump-starts the day.
But there’s so much more. Psychologists usually reserve “music” as organized sound: melody, rhythm and harmony. But the morning chorus in a quiet place carries its own importance. In a leisure setting, the sounds of light conversation, utensils on plates, the occasional scrape of a metal chair on a terrazzo floor, laughter, all serve the same purpose. Environmental soundscapes are important and for some reading these words, the sounds of the patio at the Surf Club will come to mind. For others, memories of the outdoor seating at The Monk’s Vineyard at No. 56, St. George St. in St. Augustine. Others will recall any number of their own autobiographical memories unlocked by recollection.
Reflection is the powerful community spirit of looking back together. Familiarity and association still matter the most and generic restaurant murmur might do little to fill our solitary journals. But the exact combination of particular voices and the rhythm of plates at your table, in your community, could be highly specific and extremely potent.
Our centennial, Ponte Vedra style, is approaching. The Ponte Vedra Inn & Club opened in 1928. The smells and flavors and aromas of those early years are preserved by tradition and are worthy of sharing. So, we’re trying something new, something fresh, something memorable as we always do. To recover the memory-keys, in a commemoration of place, we’re going to be revisiting some of the milestone recipes from private kitchen collections that were tasted and enjoyed by some of the guests and visitors who found PV their community of choice. We were their respite, their Florida madeleine.
Today, we’re beginning with Jackie Wilkinson’s famous Mandarin Orange Salad, Ponte Vedra Style, from kitchen to column to kitchen again.
Note: Add cooked frozen cranberries after Nov. 1.
Mix together. Chill for several hours or overnight. May need to add 2 or 3 teaspoons of sugar if oranges are not sweet. Fruit cocktail may be used instead of oranges. Serve on a bed of lettuce.
One of the many traditional Florida recipes served regularly in this place of all places, Ponte Vedra Beach.
