Certain food items can elicit feelings of nostalgia in the brain, you know which food items? If home-cooked food knocked your senses, then you are right. Home- cooked food and nostalgia go hand in hand. I know right now many of you would be reminiscing over Sunday afternoon lunches, roast chicken dinners, occasional deserts and what not. Eating is a social act that helps us affix a connection between memories and food shared around the table. The best thing about home – cooked food is that it speaks to all five senses. That is the reason we search our kitchen’s tadka in the most exotic of dishes. Feeling of nostalgia and satisfaction that comes from home cooked food never let it succumb to fancy delights. Toothsome delicacy cannot be enjoyed daily but when it comes to home-cooked food we can never get tired of it, no matter what.
In this era, everything is available to us from packed foods to packed beverages, defrost foods and a lot more, but the moment we start munching on it and voila, our eyes twinkle. We start comparing it with the taste of food, our grand mom cooked for us many moons ago. This very trait of home-cooked food takes us back to our roots time and again. That is why many restaurants are emphasizing on the concepts of comfort food. Comfort food is not related to comfortable style of cooking in any way instead it’s the food linked with merry memories, the food which resembles the taste of our home-cooked food and instils a rush of nostalgia in our hearts. Also, talking about home-cooked food how can we forget about the advantages that are linked to it? Apart from health and hygiene, there are numerous other boons associated with it. We can encourage the cooking process precisely and make changes in it. Home-cooked food is all about one’s choices and preferences. We can personalize it, the way we want. Remember the times, when we all used to literally warn our mom’s for not adding some ingredients in her home-cooked delicacies? Ha-ha well I hated tomato pieces. Home-cooked food never fails to take us down our memory lane and fill our soul with extreme contentment and joy fullness.
Reasons why home-cooked food makes us nostalgic –
Personalised meals
Remember how as a kid we used to side the tomatoes and onion pieces if seen in the meals? I still do that, lol. The mint and coriander leaves used to seem like medicines in the food. I still have a vivid picture of me always throwing away the mint leaves as I was afraid it would grow in my stomach. My meals were kept aside without the unwanted stuff that I did not want. I believe all of you had something that you did not like and enjoyed your meals without it. Well, in retros they cannot put aside things for your taste, after all it is not your ‘home’. The fact that we are all nostalgic for our homefood is that we miss the personalised bits our meals had or still has. So many food outlets have adopted this idea of ‘home like food’ where you can add the ingredients according to you, but it can still never compete with the memories and flavour of our homefood. The homegrown labels that offer food are sure home based but cannot match the level of tadka in our kitchen, right? The nostalgia with homefood will always remain over any pizza, pasta, or burger. Did I just mention the food you cannot live without, probably ha-ha!
Originality is the key
Food is an emotion. Today, many of us are rushing to try and eat the meals that tastes good and is cooked in no time. We have stopped to enhance the process of real cooking. One reason why we always resort back to our homefood is that we know how therapeutic it is. We know how mild roasted onions, smoked tomatoes, hint of garlic makes our taste buds tingle. Homefood is not hurried and made for the sake of money. We know that it is served with love and freshness of all kinds. We know that this food is not only filling our tummies but giving us the right nutrients for our bodies to absorb. Do you think your all-time cafe thinks about your nutrient potions? If yes, you probably need to think again fella. We know that homefood is all about originality, the originality of flavour, taste, smell and what not. We know that it has not been kept for days, preservatives added, or artificial flavour induced. I know you will all agree, we always find the homefood’s taste everywhere. We tend to get bored with the food cooked at home but at the end of the day we want to render back to it.
Conveys Emotion
For me, it is not just about the taste that the homefood serves with itself, there is so much more to it. It is the love and affection that even on a hot sunny day with 45 degrees outside you still get the food and not tantrum. To be able to cook in harsh climate is another way of telling you, I love you and care for you. I have tasted the finest delicacies of enormous cuisines, but none really aroused such extreme emotions as that of the home. According to Time Magazine, “researchers suggest that when we associate foods with happy memories, the effects are profound, impacting how good we think foods taste as well as how good those foods make us feel.” It is not just about remembering the taste but other factors being involved like memories of how our parents used to spoil us with our favourite meals, how they used to feed us while we watched television and the list has no end. Homefood is nostalgic because of the n number of memories it holds within our hearts. It has not only been our comfort food but the food that is an apple of our eyes. The outside food might be delicious, but we have a different momentum with the homefood. The emotion concentric home meals can never be replaced.
Accustomed to Taste
Remember how you used to tell the chefs at restaurant to keep the flavours low, medium, or intense according to your taste? Do you recall why? Well, it is because of the developed taste you have for your meals. We do not really tend to change our taste, but it develops overtime. Just like me, now I can eat the tomatoes in the food, but I can sure not compromise with the taste. There is always a genre of flavour you love and search for in every cuisine. For instance, some people who like subtle flavours will tend to love the Italian and Mexican dishes due to their mild flavours. If you love the Shahi Paneer, you are less likely to prefer the spicy gravies. You would resort back to tangy food rather than spicy. If you are a fan of Chicken curry you are less likely to prefer butter chicken over it. In a way, our nostalgia for homefood is also because of the way it tastes and smells. The food prepared at our home not only makes us nostalgic but is a part of like we can skip but never delete.
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