Quote Originally Posted by Kitsune06 View Post
To each her own. I think it's funny how painfully urbane folks will do the organic thing, 'whole foods' and try to seek out hasenfeffer and venison to recall memories of their 'simpler' roots.
It's true. Then again, I think most people when they reach their 40's and 50's get certain yearnings to connect with things from their childhood- comfort food, music they recall fondly, even old fashions in clothes. It might even be things that they envision might have been part of their past or their grandparents' past, without actually having lived it themselves. It's a comfort to feel connected to the past in some way. When I was 15-25 I was busy trying to put as much distance as I could between me and any older generations. Now I find it fascinating and enjoyable to explore the old and the new and find interesting or pleasing ways to combine them.

Now that I am in my 50's I am finally realizing that I am NOT going to live forever, and there are hints of ailments and other people my age are getting heart attacks and cancer and such. Friends have died, parents and a brother have died. It starts to hit home then, and yes, DH and I are trying our best to eat in a healthier way and improve our odds. Eating more fresh fruit and veggies, trying to find some that have not been sprayed, eating less meat, less fried stuff, etc. God knows I have to try to make up for all the years of abuse I put my body through during my life.
To tie all this in with crockpots- crockpots came along in the early 1970's. I was about 20 and I got a crockpot at that time. I vaguely recall that everything I made in it seemed to be a mushy bland creamy mess. All the recipes at the time seemed to call for nothing but over-processed canned, dried, or frozen ingredients. Canned spinach, canned mushrooms (is it so hard to slice mushrooms?), canned chicken(!), Velveeta processed "cheese food". This was when it was hard to get any bread except white bread in the store, remember. Recently I was thinking that perhaps my memory was biased and I wasn't remembering it right. But then I looked at my DH's mothers' recipe collection fromthat era, and also got hold of a 1967 Woman's Day magazine and was appalled at the horrendously awful recipes in it. It tasted bad to me then, and tastes bad to me now. To be fair- there were no recipes for venison there. That might have been good.
Hey, I have my junk food moments, believe me! And sometimes when I am sick I HAVE to have Campbell's tomato soup, just like my mother would make for me when I was little and sick. A comfort. But overall, I am trying to stay healthy for as long as I can, and for me that means eating more fresh food, more produce and whole grains, food with less additives & preservatives, less fat, etc. And excercising by walking and biking- for the first time in my life!