Anonymous wrote:In one of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy books, there is a scene where Thomas Cromwell is surrounded by all of the fancy foods you could be surrounded by in England in the mid-fourteenth century, and he is feeling sad and wanting only a purslane salad -- the food they ate when he was a child and there was no food to be had other than what you could wander outside and pick. That scene had me thinking: what is that childhood food that you wish for like this?
For me it is lasagna. My mother was not a good cook, and served very little that I liked (or that anyone would like, really), but she made decent lasagna (following the recipe on the pasta box) and it is what I asked for for my birthday every year. I find it very soothing to have it, now. And I don't want a fancy one from a restaurant. Just the basic recipe on the back of the pasta box, and it is better as a leftover.
I think the OP origin story is really sad. That the poorest food he got during starving times is a comfort to him. Most kids would probably grow up resenting that food.