And in the end...

In my introductory post I decided my first aim was “to gain insight into food cultures of the past.” I think I achieved this, for example by touching on the importance of home cooking in wartime Britain (note how the solution to Grandma’s mum not cooking was not to get a ready meal from the supermarket, as someone in a similar situation might do today, but to have another relative travel cross country in order to cook), by looking at the effects of rationing and by exploring attitudes towards foreign food.

However, I feel my main discovery is that although the wider food culture does touch our kitchens, these places are first and foremost deeply personal, and relational. And now, having written that sentence, I realise that it isn’t really a discovery at all – it’s exactly what motivated me to begin with; fond memories of Grandma preparing food for me, and the knowledge that this comforted me.

I set out to write about food itself but ended up writing about how Grandma and I feel about food, and about family and advocates outside the family. Ironically, only when I set out to write about feelings about food (the previous post re spag bol), the food itself took centre stage.