YouTube, birthdays and food history
I’ll report on your answers to the birthday question (so far there’s precisely one of them) and reply to your questions later in the week. Tonight I feel very birthdayish, even though the actual day was a week ago. This might have something to do with the presents coming in a gentle but steady and very happy flow.
I looked up YouTube (source of much time-wastage) to find something fun to give you, just to share the joy of me getting presents (I love presents). Most of the birthday fare wasn’t advanced cake making, or history of birthdays or anything rarified or dignified. In fact, YouTube has so many videos of birthday food fights that I begin to wonder why I’ve never participated in one. My mother, on the other hand, would wonder if I had. We respect our food in our family.
So, not food fight video. Out of respect for my mother. I’d love to know the geographical spread of birthday food fighting. I want to think it’s haphazard and largely teenager. I have no idea, though.
I found you something. It’s a food show and the presenters are cooking for a seventieth birthday party. It’s more about modern comfort food than about traditional cuisines, but food shows are one of my favourite aspects of food history. What TV chefs look like and act like and present their food says a bunch of interesting things about the way we see food and the way we see ourselves in relationship to food. I watch food programs for all the wrong reasons, don’t I?
Anyhow, enjoy this one. Don’t overthink it the way I do – just enjoy.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:20 pm
That video reminds me of my sisters London friends! Thanks for sharing!
Our birthday food was always the same, growing up. On our birthday we would go to my aunt’s house, and there would be fairy bread, sausage rolls and sticky bun. No cake.
If we had a party (which we didn’t always) then there would be cake.
Now, as grown ups, there’s no fairy bread (although I insisted on it on my 30th) but there’s always cake at work. In some workplaces I’ve been, you bring your own cake on your birthday - in other places somebody else would volunteer. Very rarely, it’s been provided by a supervisor.