3/18/2004 08:58:00 AM|||Andrew|||Maybe "childhood food" is an illdefined term. I think that one easy way to define it and one that fits my usage, is to say that childhood food is that food which you ate as a chilld, associate with childhood, and no longer eat as an adult. Paul's idea (which he applies theologically, but which applies here also) comes back to me: "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways." There's probably a whole book, much less a blog post, in the analysis of that idea, but I think it says something very perceptive. When we come to think of ourselves as adults, we purposefully set aside childish ways, perhaps in an effort to distance ourselves from that childhood and cement ourselves as an adult in other people's minds. It's interesting that some people, later in life and secure in their adulthood, will take up some of those set aside things and experience a kind of second childhood, so to speak. Society looks down on that, but I don't think it's a bad thing. Anyway.

Not only do we set aside childish behaviors or ways of thinking, but food as well, I think. And clearly what is set aside will be different from person to person. What each one associates with childhood in her one mind, that is what she will set aside. Some things will differ from culture to culture, from country to country, others will differ among individuals. In the wacky pseudo-US but not really culture I grew up in (and for US culture in general, I think), cereals like Count Chocula are probably associated with childhood. Peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches come to mind...I don't see many adults eating those.

Just some thoughts. Do you think I'm right on? Totally off? What foods do you consider childhood foods? Of course, of the people who read this I realize that some may not be fully removed from their childhood. But it will come. Especially once college is done with, I think.|||107962913020675904|||