Quick Question: Comfort Food and Our Changing Home Diet
Has what you need in a home changed with time?
Has what you need in a home changed with time? I don’t mean the obvious things like, perhaps, size or location. Instead, emotional needs: the things you need to feel nurtured, healthy, content, and comforted. Has that changed in regard to your home?
The following thought originated from an exchange with Susie Kaufman, author of seventysomething (a Substack well worth reading). Recently, she has been writing about moving from her much-loved home after several decades in the Berkshires. In order to be near their sons and families, she and her husband have downsized from a large home in a quiet neighborhood and moved several states away to a condo in a city.
That’s a huge change and quite a transition. What struck me most, however, was when she said she hadn’t realized “how starved [she] was for family” until they finally decided to move.
That got me thinking about the difference between comfort food and starvation. The necessity of family (however you define that) in our diet. Family as more than comfort food that we visit for the holidays but as a solid dose of nutrients we need daily.
Our dietary needs change over the years. What nurtures us at one stage in life isn't necessarily the same at another stage in life.
According to Ayurvedic medicine, the dietary needs of women typically change with menopause. For me, that has meant avoiding anything dry, raw, or cold. (It has also meant moving to a warmer climate.) My body functions much better if I eat warm, cooked foods, the more moisture the better. Do I still like ice cream, particularly gelato? Of course. But honestly, it’s not the same comfort food that it once was.
Over time, my comfort foods have changed. My needs and preferences are different. For years, a frittata with kale and feta cheese was a staple of my morning routine. Now oatmeal is. Thin-crust pizza with green olives was a weekly favorite. Now, when I do eat pizza, it has spicy sauce and a variety of cheese. Extra cheese.
Even comfort food - which always makes us feel better - isn't something we can only, and always, eat. Sometimes, in order to get the nutrients we need, an entirely new diet is required.
So maybe this is true of home as well. Maybe the place we love is our “comfort food” but at some point, we become starved for something else, we are missing essential nutrients to thrive, we need a new diet: we need to move.
What do you think?
When I was young, I thrived in San Francisco. I loved the energy, the diversity, the food, the music, and culture. I left to be near family. Now, I crave quiet and solitude. The city makes me anxious. My needs have changed.
What about you?
Thanks for the shout out to seventysomething, Jan. I'm very aware of my changing needs regarding scale, noise, commotion. Moving to St. Louis Park, MN, I was delighted to discover a comfortable walkability, some kind of middle ground between city and country. I want an environment that feels friendly and convenient. Much less enchanted by "action."
Yes, of course, adaptation to most new things and most thinking is the key to successful long term survival. I’m 82 with my share of health issues and though I can no longer fly jets or climb up ladders to fix a roof, or climb mountains, I find other ways and other methods to accomplish stuff.
My mother made the most wonderful bread pudding with a fantastic sweet bourbon sauce. In my thirties I was traveling all over the world on business, and in my off hours I ate at great restaurants in France, England, Norway, Singapore, Jakarta, etc where if offered, I always ordered the bread pudding, in search of my mothers fabulous bread pudding. Somewhere in my sixties it dawned on me that I was never going to find it. First, I really didn’t remember exactly how it tasted and second, my taste buds had changed significantly whereby probably wouldn’t recognize it if she made it. We are not what we were, we are what we are at a given point. Nostalgia is cruel, we pine for what was when may well reject it if we got it. Lima beans are like that, old girlfriends may be as well. So, you’re on a good track, I’ll be interested to hear where it goes, particularly from thoughtful folk. Phil