Not Over The Rainbow Yet

A sure-fire way to crave a particular food more than ever is when you Just. Can’t. Have. It. Recent hankerings after viennoise au chocolat, crack pie, fondant fancies and (absurdly after all that sugar overload) diet Cherry Coke support this highly scientific allegation based on a gluttonous sample of one.

The difficulty in obtaining some (although by no means all) of the various things to eat that skitter distractedly across the bit of my brain that is permanently devoted to thoughts of food is their belonging to a particular place or a specific point in time. The power of food to transport you somewhere else is simply amazing.

When I came across this photo, it immediately made me think of food...

Photo via Satellite True

Probably not the reaction you’d expect from a picture like that! But it took me straight back to being a small girl in New Zealand, waiting with my dad for a Friday-night order of fish and chips to be ready. The takeaway shop had walls panelled with wood-printed laminate, and a tank of tropical fish that I never thought to connect with the coming meal. The fish – often shark – was thickly coated with batter that never seemed soggy in the middle and was extra-specially crunchy towards the head and the tail. And the chips were crispy and golden with fluffy middles and a generous sprinkling of salt, in the days before people worried about high blood pressure.

Sometimes, after the fish and chips, there might be the promise of a rainbow bar. Like a bigger, better version of a licorice allsort, rainbow bars were long and thin and came in packs of six, each a different colour. I was convinced the candy exteriors had distinguishable flavours, and whether they really did was maybe less important than your imagining it was true. I almost wonder whether I imagined the rainbow bars themselves, because when I went in search of them, they were nowhere to be found...

That’s a lot of memories to come from a brightly coloured piano. What’s the most unexpected thing you’ve come across that’s made you think of a particular food? I’d love to hear about it...