childhood foods

There's something about illness - even ones as trivial as the common cold -  that propels me back to childhood, makes me search for comfort as I sleep or shuffle around the flat steeped in misery.  Leggings and ankle length cardigans, holey slippers.  Jam sandwiches.  At such times, I remember childhood foods.  The bottles of lucozade - glass and wrapped in yellow cellophane - which tasted wonderful when my appetite had gone.



Other foods - eaten in times of wellness, had a high comfort rating:  lentil soup with bread dunked in it;  stew sandwiches.  Yet other dishes, prepared and served regularly, are remembered with less affection.  The worst was curried
eggs.I used to dread arriving home to the smell of these.  Meat or vegetarian curries are one thing,  but eggs....
















Then there was mince - your common, bog standard mince -  served
with lettuce doused in a vinegary/sugary mix - something I've never come across in adult years.  I remember toast with Robertson's golden shred marmalade, removing each bit of rind before I could eat it.  The chocolate mice with stained brown stringy tails that my father brought home at Saturday lunchtimes.  Cauliflower cheese with a garnish of baked cornflakes.  Lemon meringue pie.  Seriously chocolaty chocolate cake.   Toad in the hole -  loving the sausage, being less keen on the yorkshire pudding.














As for creamola foam - did I really eat it dry and have a sore stomach later?  Or pig out on cans on Nestlé sweetened condensed milk, feeling sick afterwards?







I remember after being ditched by my first serious boyfriend, making a bucketful of butterscotch sauce to accompany ice cream, and falling asleep by the fire while watching Ski Sunday.








In those days I was seriously thin, described at the tennis club as the walking pin.  Changed times.  But as I sit writing this at 3 am, struggling to sleep because of a blocked nose/dripping nose/ sneezing and the intermittent cough, already I regret the blackcurrent jam sandwich I ate ten minutes ago.  I didn't need the calories.  I did need the comfort.

Jane