If you’re anything like us, being cooped up at home has helped you learn to reappreciate the delicacies of your childhood. Here’s to a couple of our all-time favourites!

I’m 10 years old standing in front of my Grandmother “Gaga’s” fridge in her Richmond, Virginia, kitchen. I open the door slowly, and there they are—six little Pyrex glass custard cups filled to the brim with chocolate pudding. Each one is covered with perfectly cut pieces of wax paper. It will be a few hours before Gaga sets them in front of us and we dip our spoons carefully through the thin layer of chocolate skin that forms as they’re cooling.

Though it was made from a boxed mix, it tasted like it was made from scratch. Sometimes we’d pour a little milk on top, which turned it into something closer to a chocolate milkshake and made it last a little longer. When I get a yen for that favourite taste of childhood, I mix my own and pour it just like Gaga did into my own set of little glass Pyrex bowls found at a flea market many years back. It never tastes as good as Gaga’s, but that memory of her wearing her gingham-checked apron (like the one I now wear, seen at left) standing in front of her Hotpoint stirring that dark concoction oh-so-carefully with her worn wooden pudding spoon is almost as good.—Mary Randolph Carter

Peanut butter, jelly, bread. How can such a simple combination be so irresistible, so … the kind of thing you never, no matter how much you eat, seem to get sick of? It’s not the mix of savory and sweet, or at least it’s not only that. Nor is it really the bread, which is but a mere vehicle for more intense flavours. The secret, of course, lies in the peanut butter itself. Because—as I’m rediscovering through all these weeks quarantined at home—that stuff is magic. It makes virtually everything better. Apples? Yes! Bananas! You know it! Saltine crackers? If you must! And I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to that snack-time staple of celery with a few raisins on top—better known to kindergarteners as ants on a log.

These days, every hour or two I seem to find myself wandering into the kitchen for a drive-by. I tell myself it’s to take a screen break, but the real reason is that I’m looking for something to put a schmear of PB on—ideally a fluffy slice of bread, topped with a generous slather of strawberry jam. As a result, I’d have to say my PB&J intake has roughly quintupled over the past few weeks. And you know what? I’m OK with that. There are countless ways I’m longing for my life to return to “normal,” but this isn’t one of them.—Tyler Thoreson