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It’s lunch break, so I’m updating my blog, instead of going for lunch(!!) I got really excited reading this and remember all those wonderful books I read in my childhood about food. With the release of Tim Burton’s Alice in wonderland, I’m reading about it everywhere, even in London’s Selfridges. A while back I blogged about the mathematical breakdown behind the story, which I’ve read many times over in different points of my life, this by far is the most adult. I could read it over and over and discover new things. I’ve read some articles that the excess of food also reflected the difficult times in the Victorian age where food was insufficient, this is an exact parallel to the propaganda posters in 1950’s China where turnips and cabbages were portrayed larger than people… showcasing a time of abundance during the famine years.
I had a very food oriented childhood. My mother quit her job and became a full time a housewife after she got married and the three of us (my brothers and I) ruined her youth as she became a mother at 24).
She was always in the kitchen, there was always something to eat at anytime of day and night. My mother was also always asking if we were hungry and I always had a lunchbox to take to school for recess time. I remember we were not allowed to eat Mcdonald’s until we were about 11 or 12—my mother made her very own hamburgers for us to take in our Mickey Mouse lunchbox. She made everything from perfectly made sardine sandwiches, to Malay kuehs, to otak otak, sweet Cantonese desserts and fish & chips. In a way, I think cooking was sort of therapeutic for her.
I’m just waiting for another Proustian flashback.
Here is a brilliant article by Francis Lam on how Biggie Small’s lyrics strikes a cord in food memories.
“Everyone, no matter how hardened, can remember the foods that defined their childhood. And everyone knows, whether you are eating sardines or lobster, that what you eat and what you want to eat says much about you.”
