Food nostalgia (or, the strange things that cross your mind when you are old, ill, or both at once)

When you are ill, or old, or incapacitated in a way that leaves you with time on your hands and a need not to think too hard about the present, your thoughts begin to wander in unexpected directions. Memories suddenly appear unbidden: a surprising number of them are about food, perhaps because you no longer have much control over what you are being given to eat. I have had sudden cravings for things which I only occasionally ate before being ill; I have wanted to try both new things and things from the past which I haven't had for a long time (perhaps there's an element of a food bucket list in this!); I have longed for dishes I used to cook a lot but can no longer do, things which were not available in hospital and are not part of the repertoire of the rest of my family; I now look obsessively at food blogs and recipes and I still keep up my recipe notes in the hope that one day, perhaps, I will be able to do some of it again.

One memory which floated back was of my grandfather, who, becoming seriously ill with a degenerative disease in his 60s, badly wanted the tripe and onions of his childhood again. Bleurgh. (My grandmother couldn't locate any in the small southern English town they had moved to - he might have had a better chance in the various cities they had lived in). I have also read somewhere that, along with working more generally on memories with older people (particularly those with dementia), someone has had the idea of researching what food was popular in their childhood and giving them that.

You can't over-generalise, of course. Some people's memories, not just about food, are not good. Tread carefully! Asking an old lady about her deceased husband might produce a lovely romantic story, or it might draw out of her a tale of broken fingers and how he only saw the baby once and pushed off and was never seen again and left her destitute. As for food, if I am ever in a position where somebody thinks it would make my day to return to the cuisine of the 1960s and 1970s, I think I would like the chance to veto some of it!