This morning I woke up and it was dark. I was lying in the darkness and for SOME reason I was thinking about growing up and what it was like. Not in a weird way. I was just sort of reflecting on how much growing up there is to do. And how far it is from fourteen to forty!
In particular I was thinking about FOOD. I know. That is weird, actually. I was thinking about how the things I loved to eat THEN are not the things I like to eat NOW.
For instance I loved to eat liverwurst on crackers, whole wheels of camembert, tinned tomato soup, peas smothered in mint sauce, tinned vegetable soup, sliced white bread, whole bottles of tomato juice, copious quantities of cheese on toast, cherry ripes by the bucket load. I liked a scoop of ice-cream in percolated coffee. I liked condensed milk from the can. I loved cheese fondue and chocolate fondue and beef fondue. That kind of stuff.
I don't really eat any of those things now. My tastes have changed. I like less processed, healthier, less packaged food. I still like cheese on toast and Camembert and tomato juice. But I don't eat them very often. And I wouldn't eat them day after day like I did back then.
I think if I ate those things I would explode into some kind of Pippapotamus. I think that's the truth of it and my taste buds know it. They are looking out for me and my health. I like that about them.
How about YOU? What kinds of things did YOU love to eat when you were growing up? Have your tastes changed? Do you eat differently now? Did your appetite grow up like you? Or are you still deliciously connected to the things you loved back then? Are you taste buds looking out for you?
At 14, all I ate was rice, apples, and soy milk. My BMI was 14.8. I am glad I have grown up and now enjoy ALL THE FOODS with the least healthy ones being a sometimes food. My BMI is now 23.8.
ReplyDeleteI just love how as you grow up, you try the foods you thought you HATED and find that you actually like them. They morph from your most disliked to your most beloved foodstuff. For me, this applied to avocado, olives, brie cheese and to mushrooms, which I hated purely (I think) because my brother didn't like them. Mind you, some things don't change, either. I still can't stomach rice pudding!
ReplyDeleteI was a condensed milk fan as well!
ReplyDeleteWe ate a lot of banana, milk and sugar for breakfast, glasses and glasses of milo (with four or five heaped tablespoons of chocolatey goodness stirred in), lots of curries and naan, toasties with vegemite and cheese, and meals that were WAY more simple than the things I dish up now. I guess, in comparison, my tastes have grown along with the kind of food we now have available to us - I mean, it's nothing to cook with figs or feta, or to serve different kinds of lettuce in a salad other than iceburg; and we've definitely embraced world cuisine, which is a wonderful thing!
Great post Pip - food is a lovely thing to muse over on Sunday morning!
x
Hee hee I used to love condensed milk I used to sit with my mum & sister we would each have a spoon & sit eating from the can it was delicious :)) A while back I made a cheesecake with condensed milk I thought I would get my spoon to have that moment back well yulk!!!!!! It was sooooo sweet I cannot believe we used to sit & ate the whole tin between us??
ReplyDeleteI grew up in a family where my mum was vegetarian and my dad was a lover of offal. Our evening meal could consist of anything from tripe and onions, pig trotters or ox tongue to lentil loaf and mung beans. The house was often filled with a heady smell of sauteed kidneys and cigarette smoke.
ReplyDeleteWe had a massive vege garden, worm farm and every fruit tree imaginable. We belonged to a food co-op where we got all our fresh produce, seeds, dried fruit and grains.
Mum was a bit hit and miss with our meals. She would try different things and when she lucked upon something that all us kids liked she never made enough however there was always plenty of lentil loaf to last a week of leftovers! She used to make a chickpea batter and coat comfrey leaves in it and fry it in the pan. They were called VEGETABLE FISH but REALLY??? who was she kidding?
My school lunch box was embarissingly (for a 7 year old) with ryvitas with cottage cheese and red dates, a hard boiled egg and some nuts and raisins.At 10 i took a stand and demanded only vegemite sandwiches in my lunch.
When i left school it was a diet of share house "whatever you can cook in one pot" and plenty of lollies and junk food.
Now im an adult and a mum ive reverted back to my roots, fresh healthy sustainable living. And not so much of the offal, which was and is quite offal. xx
(condensed milk in the tube!!! arggghhh LOve the stuff!) xx Kelly
Pippapotamus: that is so cute!!
ReplyDeleteI certainly think my tastes have evolved: as a child I would turn my nose up when Mum cooked soyaroni or sweet potatoes but as I got older I grew to love them! We grew up on very little junk food: a brown rice and wholemeal or rye bread kind of family: so white bread still remains a treat for me. I still have my childhood love of lollies, snacks & treaties though. Fave at home snack is still probably cheese and peanut butter on vitawheats, I've probably eaten 100s since I was a kid!!
I remember LOVING butter. I would get a spoon and get a big hunk of butter and just eat it. One day, my mother, who was sick of my little habit gave me a massive spoonful of butter. I ate it all and was subsequently very sick. To this day I can't stomach cold butter. Won't have butter on sandwiches. I can eat it say on warm toast, but cold - no way! I actually feel sick now just thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteA Pippapotamus! Hee!
ReplyDeleteI use to love eating sweetened condensed milk too!
ReplyDeleteFunnily enough… while I don't eat it these days, I came across it again in Hong Kong! We were having breakfast at a local Chinese diner and one of their specialties (that all the locals love) is sweetened condensed milk drizzled on a buttery bun. Naturally, I had to try such a delicacy and YUMMO! I don't, however, think I'll make it a regualr part of my diet. ;)
One thing i remember loving as a child, was good old kraft cheese. It lives in the vegimite section at the supermarket. That was the only cheese we had when i was growing up, it wasn't until I moved out of home did i realise that other yummy ones existed. Now i can't stand kraft cheese as it's way too processed. Ick! We also had things like Horlicks and Malt in our milk before bed - mmm yum! I might see if my kids like those things - not the kraft though!
ReplyDeleteI loved lentil burgers, spaghetti, cheese, cheese, cheese, milkshakes in tall glasses, sour worm lollies, hot, salty chips and candy floss...anything that mum wasn't so keen on
ReplyDeleteNow I still love lentil burgers, garden greens from my own garden, far less dairy products and I love cooking and exploring new ingredients which tend to focus on being healthy but also delicious! My attitude to food is far healthier and fun these days!
I liked pretty much the same things when I was a kid, but I am much more adventurous in trying new things now. I didn't try Indian food until I was 36, which is a shame, because I love it, but I was so afraid to even try it for most of my life. The thing that has changed most for me is quantity. I used to eat huge meals, followed by huge desserts, and lots of snacks throughout the day. Now, if I eat more than small bowl of anything at one meal, I feel bloated and nauseous, so I eat little bits here and there.
ReplyDeleteI loved chocolate crackles, neopolitan ice cream, Peck's ham spread, scrambled eggs and rice pudding.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm dairy free! Must have overdosed as a teen!
You are right, your taste buds help look after you when you get older.
Hi Pip!
ReplyDeleteI was one of those "fussy kids", the type I hope to god my own children wont be like.
I ate potato and cheese for dinner for about 10 years, night after night.
Now from time to time I'll buy an odd looking vegetable or an exotic spice that I'd never used before and then pour over Taste.com to work out what to do with it.
Jx
That's a fantastic thought/topic! When I was 14 I would eat the lunch my mum packed me on the bus on the way to school, then I would bye a block of chocolate at the store near school and a hash brown before a school, a doughnut and Doritos at lunch time and hot chips after school at the station! Every day! you can tell where all my pocket money went...
ReplyDeleteDon't eat those things at all anymore! Well, aside from the occasional hot chip... Thank goodness my immature self had a FAST metabolism...
We lived in the sticks so I was brought up on Sunshine powdered milk. oh yuck...and I really dont like milk of any description because of that. This is not to say I am healthy and dairy free. Noooooooo. We only ever had lollies on September school holidays when we would do a road trip. Now I cant get enough of the blighters.Dad would buy malted milk shakes at any opportunity! At Christmas Mum would get all fancy and have cheese and gherkin on toothpicks AND red cocktail onions and kebana. I loved all that. and meringues - pale pink and delicate white. Proper pavlova year round! - usually topped off with tinned two fruits! OMG! what were we thinking back then??? We had a lovely orchard with the most amazing variety of fruits so over summer we'd have beautiful stone fruit and quinces and figs. Still irks me to have to buy them at the shops! sue
ReplyDeletePippapotomus - I love that! When I was younger, I ate tons of grilled cheese sandwiches, cheese dips/sauces, cheesy pizzas... I see a theme here. I remember for lunch I would get a bag of fritos, a brownie and a soda from the vending machines at school. With a diet like that, I don't know how I stayed thin. Although on nights when my father was out of town, my mom and I would eat Lean Cuisines for dinner. But then we split a dozen glazed donuts. (The kind you keep in the freezer and then heat in the oven before you eat them... YUM!)
ReplyDeleteGreat topic! I used to love baloney cups (baloney placed under broiler so it would curl up into cup shape), then pour syrup in it. another one would be creamed ham. Hideous.
ReplyDeleteHi Pip
ReplyDeleteA great post inspiration. I have always wanted to get the fact that when I was younger I loved Spam! Can you believe it? Now it lokks, feels like and smells to me like the most disgusting thing ever? I also ate so many of those small flavoured tuna tins through Uni I can no longer stand the smell of them but one that had stuck around for my lifetime and I am sure will never be given up is toast. I just love God Damn TOAST! xxxx
I think I migh have to go and get some xxx
Vienna sausages used to be a delightful treat for me and now I find them rather repugnant. It doesn't help that they now give me heartburn as well. I used to hate mushrooms but now love them fresh or fried in butter. I still do not enjoy mushy mushrooms from a can.
ReplyDeleteI spent a lot of time with my Polish grandmother (Babcia) as a child and she used to make this amazing snack for me that I just adored - sweetened cottage cheese mushed with milk and sugar in a tea-cup. As a kid, it felt like the most amazing and special treat in the world. I have since tried to re-create that snack and it has never worked. I put it down to not actually really knowing what my Babcia gave me in those tea cups, or cottage cheese ain't what it used to be OR my taste buds are far too refined and grown up for cottage cheese mushed into tea cups now.
ReplyDeleteI like food nostalgia. Food memories are often times the best memories.
Luv from a huge fan x
Hey Pip I wrote a post inspired by this one, hope you don't mind I nicked your title but have included a link and changed it to "Changing tastes (A post inspired by Pip)"...I hope thats ok?
ReplyDeleteOh of COURSE that is okay! Yay! Be sure to drop the link in here, so we can all read it! x Pip
DeleteOpps I totally forgot to add the link! Here it is: http://dreams.theotherday.com.au/?p=1756. And thank you :) x
ReplyDeleteUm I'm not sure if I replied to your reply (a bit pregnant brained at the mo) so if I haven't here is the link: http://dreams.theotherday.com.au/?p=1756 . Thanks for letting me use your idea :) x x (also if I have replied you can delete this comment if you like)
ReplyDeletei think i am the only one whos tastes buds have been the opposite since "growing up" when i was young i rarely ate lollies and chocolate only when the next door neighbour would secretly give them to us, i only really tried coca cola once i had left high school. It was a big treat for me to buy hot chips at school and would think it was a waste of my hard earned cash! Now i crave everything that is bad for me!!! i at least eat one little bit of chocolate every day its become a bad habit and no matter how bad i know things are like lollies and chocolate i cant help but crave them!
ReplyDeleteWe used to love condensed milk from the tin! And on toast it was good too. I used to love mac & cheese but I haven't had it in so long.
ReplyDeleteBoy did I have a sweet tooth back then! More Milo than milk in my drinks and whoever invented condensed milk in a tube deserves a medal!
ReplyDelete