Anyone know why grandparents always had some of these in their freezer?įor cereal, I had a lot of choices to narrow down, but ultimately it had to be Golden Nuggets. And it had to be the type without the sticks. Did anyone else eat them one facial feature at a time? No? Just me?Īnother grandparent staple, choc ices. McCain’s Smiles made any meal instantly 100x better. I remember having to share these Milkybar dessert pots half a pot each with my Grandma, because the dairy in them set off our asthma if we had a whole pot each, but they were too good to give up entirely!įabulous Bakin Boys cupcakes are sadly no longer available, but they were the bomb! If you didn’t peel the thick chocolate layer from the cake and eat them seperately, you were doing it wrong! I always just ate them straight from the foil. Laughing Cow cheesey triangles were a staple of Grandma’s fridge. Starting with drinks, I was a weirdo who didn’t (and still doesn’t) like pure orange juice, but Sunny D (or Sunny Delight as it still was back then) was where it was at for fruit juice! If I’ve left off your favourites, let me know! What would make your list? I’ve had to limit my choices somewhat as initially I had about 50 things on my list, so I’ve had to keep it to one or two items per section. There are certain things that can catapult you right back to those days, and today, I wanted to talk about the foods that bring on that nostalgic feeling for me. A time of playing ‘It’ on the playgound, handstands and cartwheels, scraped hands and bumped knees, plastic chairs and plastic lunchboxes. In this remembering, and the recipes preserved, the many values of nostalgia cuisine are well demonstrated.ĭon’t miss out on ET Prime stories! Get your daily dose of business updates on WhatsApp.Childhood. It���s a charming way of remembering a person, particularly women of a certain generation for whom food was one of the few ways they could express themselves. Just titled Mai���s Recipes, it is a simple, self published compilation of a mother���s recipes done by her children. Huge, heavy, lavishly illustrated and priced at a whopping Rs 3,000, with profits going to a charitable initiative of Apollo Hospitals, it���s an interesting product, though seems more aimed at demonstrating present prestige than discovering past cuisine.īut this same spirit is also resulting in other efforts like Dadimano Varso, the really valuable compilation of Palanpuri Jain cooking, and even a simple book of Mangalorean home cooking I found at my grocer���s. The most imposing form this nostalgia cuisine has taken is a book of the same name by Sucharitha Reddy, wife of Dr Prathap C Reddy of Apollo Hospitals. Piya in Amitav Ghosh���s The Hungry Tide is the second type of exile, who doesn���t consider herself as one, until almost unwillingly she is seduced into nostalgia as she sees her boatman Fokir preparing a meal: ���Even as she recoiled from the smell, she could not tear her eyes from his flying fingers: it was as through she were a child again, standing on the counter, beside a stove it was her mother���s hands she was watching.��� This rediscovered nostalgia is a potent force, driving desi kids like Padma Lakshmi and Anjum Anand to write books, present TV shows and sell merchandise that all serve up suitably updated nostalgia (like with olive oil, since ghee is taking nostalgia too far). Jhumpa Lahiri���s Mrs.Sen, in her story of the same name, is the first kind, slowly going to pieces in the loneliness of America, cooking inappropriately elaborate meals for which she goes to great lengths to get the right spices and fish, but nothing really works. Today the exiles from India are Indians themselves, of two kinds ��� the first generation, for whom the longing for the taste of home is sharp, and the second (and now third, as well) generation, for whom it is more subtle, yet still strong.
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