At times of upheaval, people turn to comfort food. In early Covid, for example, it was the processed foods of childhood — cans of Chef Boyardee or fistfuls of Goldfish crackers.
We seek these foods, food experts say, because they remind us of our childhood and the people who took care of us. Mac and cheese makes us think about Mom. Hot dogs evoke Sundays at the game with Dad.
So what does it mean then, teetering on the brink of Trump Again, I’ve turned to what I think of as grandma food? Instead of indulging in the madeleines of my childhood (Lucky Charms, SpaghettiOs, TV dinners) I found myself eating things I would never have touched as a child. Foods that even throughout adulthood, I’ve thought of uninteresting or worse.
The first sign of trouble was digestives, those bland, seemingly useless cookies eaten by British people. Even the name is repulsive. Cookies aren’t meant to be good for you. But developed in Scotland in the 19th century, the digestive biscuit was believed to aid digestion, a matter of keen interest to an older demographic. In other words, it is the stewed prune of snack food, a thing expressly intended for the mature eater.
For the record, I am middle-aged.
I no longer recall how I started on digestives (or am choosing to forget that it was my 80-something father-in-law). But having tried them, I’m forced to admit that the biscuits, made with coarse brown wheat flour and sodium bicarbonate, are surprisingly tasty. I now buy them of my own accord and place them in a high cabinet where no one will else will go near them. I’ve experimented with various iterations, including the Marks & Spencer store brand, and resolved that “the original” from McVitie’s, that most stalwart of British brands, is the only correct choice.
Certain old-lady ingredients I once thought had no right to be in cookies — lemon, nuts or, say, ginger — are now genuinely appetizing. During Season 4 of “Slow Horses,” I observed Jackson Lamb (old) eating Jaffa Cakes, a dowager treat involving sponge cake, orange jam and chocolate, and immediately had to get my hands on some. They’re delicious.
When feeling slightly adventurous, I snack like an old Sicilian widow, gravitating helplessly toward dry biscotti or the plainest cookies from Mulino Bianco, tarallucci, which the company boldly markets as “the grandmother’s traditional shortbread biscuits.”
As I stroll matronly through the ice cream aisle, my arms reach out for vanilla, or even more worryingly, orange sherbet. I am aware that these foods will be available at a nursing home one day, yet I want them now.
At breakfast time I’m drawn to foods I associate with people who didn’t feel like putting their dentures in that morning. Oatmeal, for example, which objectively looks like sick. Sometimes I add raisins, an item that, like the dread apple embedded with a razor blade, I’ve long considered a special curse of Halloween. When I eat breakfast out, I order whole wheat with poached eggs on top. Poached.
(“If you live to be 90 in England and can still eat a boiled egg they think you deserve the Nobel Prize,” Alan Bennett, the platonic ideal of elderly, once said.)
This is not about nostalgia. I didn’t know my grandparents well or long enough to take in their eating habits, other than to accept warm Five-Flavor Lifesavers from my paternal grandfather, who died when I was 4. (Hard candies, for the record: old people food. And I recommend butterscotch.)
None of this is a slight against old people. I aspire to be one of them one day. But I don’t understand why I’ve started eating like one now. It could be some kind of a self-imposed memento mori. Or a pre-emptive strike against inevitable decline.
There are medical reasons people’s eating habits change. We lose taste buds as we age. The ones we retain become less sensitive, usually after age 60, with our sense of sweet and salty the first to go. Can taste buds age prematurely, like an early streak of Susan Sontag gray but far less attractive?
Yet my senses are fully intact. I have all my teeth. Part of my brain persists in operating like the child I’ve always been, reflexively buying new Haribo varieties when I spot them, then tossing them into a drawer where they harden and go stale.
There is also plenty of old-man food I still will not put spoon or fork to: Cream of Wheat, rice pudding, Triscuits, weak tea with milk. Consuming any one of these would be nothing short of a cry for help.
What then to make of this new predilection? I confess I’ve always looked forward to my dotage as a carefree stage of life, a time when you can walk down the street wearing slippers and an outrageous hat and people will just assume you’re someone else’s eccentric grandma. My penchant for old people’s food may betray a longing for no longer giving a damn, probably an entirely reasonable response to entirely unreasonable times.
When old age comes for me, I’ll be ready for it or will at least know what to eat once I’m there.
But the holidays are no time for morbid thoughts. Thanksgiving, in any case, is expressly built for golden years-style feeding. Half the food served is intentionally mushy and has been around since “American Cookery” hit bookshelves in 1796. Let the kids have their chocolate chip cookies. I’ll be taking the pumpkin pie.
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