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Paper short abstract

This paper explores childhood food memories as reflections of nostalgia, identity, and intergenerational connection. It examines how these memories shape cultural belonging and whether nostalgia can inspire sustainable cooking practices, challenging consumerism and the decline of home cooked meals.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines food memories as expressions of nostalgia, identity, and intergenerational connection. Through personal narratives, it explores how individuals recall meals from their formative years, dishes often remembered with warmth, longing, ambivalence and sometimes even discomfort. These memories can shape personal identities and contribute to cultural belonging, highlighting deep connection between food, the past, and interpersonal relationships.

The study will explore how memory and food intersect at the kitchen table, examine whether nostalgia can serve as more than personal reflection. Specifically, it will consider whether nostalgia can act as a catalyst for sustainable, home based cooking practices. This research ultimately aims to demonstrate that preparing food is not merely a daily task but a meaningful performance of cultural continuity and belonging.

The paper focuses nostalgia as more than a simple sentimental longing for the past. It is framed as a complex, temporal experience that engages with a deeper existential sense of being. Drawing on ethnological studies of commensality and food practices, the paper will explore the kitchen as both a symbolic and social space. Historically regarded as the heart of the home, where meals are shared around the table, the kitchen will be contrasted with today’s trends of convenience foods and diminishing home cooked meals. The study will question whether the kitchen table, traditionally a site of communal meals, is disappearing and if so how nostalgia can inspire the reclamation of cooking practices as a counter to modern consumerism