Food History

The blogchain is upon me. Niteowl foolishly wished that I would post about macaroni cheese, it being a comfort food and comfort being the current theme of the blogchain. Alas, my inner researcher surfaced, and I developed an unholy curiosity in what search terms have been used to find my blog in the last week and if any of them have an element of comfort food. Niteowl is entirely out of luck.

Firstly, no macaroni cheese. Not a scrap. Not even a hint of the fact that I’ve blogged on it already. It just does not appear in my search terms. If no-one’s looking for it, I don’t need to blog it. Niteowl is bereft of comfort, entirely.

He’s about to get more uncomfortable still, since using my search term list to look at comfort food breeds strange results. Also, as you might have guessed, he had the bad luck to run into Gillian in a very peculiar mood - I’m preparing my talk on Ancient Food for Melbourne tonight and seriousness is beyond me.

Back to that list of search terms from the last seven days.

Are bogong moths comfort food? Or are what they eat comfort foods? Certainly bogong moths appear a lot in my queries. I believe they’re good toasted, but I’ve never tried cooking them, despite the swarms that appear here very summer. I’ve blogged on them, too, and here’s the proof. Blogging and search terms alone don’t prove something is a comfort food, otherwise witchetty grubs would be way up there in terms of Australian bushfoods. I’ve not blogged about witchetty grubs yet - aren’t you relieved to hear this?

Maybe there’s a comfort period for foodies?

That might explain why I have so many queries about the Middle Ages (the other explanation is that I’m a Medievalist, which, while true, is way less interesting). The second most popular search term was “Medieval recipes” and the third was “Gothic tests” online. “Medieval feast” was unsurprisingly popular, given I’ve blogged a menu and recipes. Nothing to do with comfort food and everything to do with easy cooking. “Spices mixed with food in the Middle Ages” can only refer to that old furphy, that spicing hid spoiled meat in the Middle Ages. I ranted a bit about this a few months ago, intimating that some people might possibly have zombie ancestors, and it’s been a consistently popular search term since then. Why doesn’t “zombie ancestors” appear as a search term. Think of how many people would find my blog if they were hunting under “zombie ancestors.”

Sorry about the zombie detour. Back to normal blogging. Well, what passes for normal on a night when I’m preparing a talk that includes suicidal Roman gourmands and Medieval viagra. There are two more Medieval queries, though, which makes me think that the Middle Ages is our place of emotional safety, where we go to dream.

Another place of food safety is biscuits. Cookies to you lot on the other side of the Puddle (if the Atlantic is the Pond, then the Pacific must be the Puddle - perfect logic).

I get so many queries about biscuits and their history, on gem scone pans, on scones, on 1950s food. Mmm. I’m falling into nostalgia myself, just at the thought. This is where comfort food is. The 1950s. A Devonshire tea or even a high tea. A fresh baked batch of scones or a tray of biscuits. The scent of baking and a big brown ceramic pot of tea on the table, brewing.

While I dream of big pots of tea and fresh-baked scones, you get to think about Alaska. Not just across the Puddle, but further north than I am south. What’s really scary is that A View From the Waterfront’s weather may well be warmer than mine, today.

AW blogchain, comfort food, bogong moths, macaroni and cheese, zombie ancestors