I’m currently reading Quentin Tarantino’s largely enjoyable 2022 paean to the movies of the 1970s, “Cinema Speculation.” While his opinions about the films that filled his formative years are delightfully eccentric, I think the book is more fascinating in what it says about the filmmaker himself.
Rarely does a book unintentionally expose so much about its writer.
Stick with me here, because I’m going to get to the topic of food in a minute.
In his customary enthusiastic, gonzo style, Tarantino writes about the wildly inappropriate films he was taken to as a child — “The Wild Bunch” and “The Getaway” and “Bullitt” and “Black Gunn” and “Supervixen.” He loved them all, the more violent, the better.
Clearly, these movies, which he saw week after week after week, shaped and warped his world view. Echoes of them abound in the films he has made, from the great (“Pulp Fiction,” “Jackie Brown,” “Kill Bill, Vol. 1”) to the ungreat (“Death Proof,” “Kill Bill, Vol. 2”).
What becomes embarrassingly clear in the book is that he has never grown up. The films he loved as a child, he still loves today. He approaches every movie he sees with the mind of an 8-year-old being feverishly overstimulated by films that were meant for adults.
Which made me think about food: Why is so much of our taste in food determined by choices we made when we were 6?
When I was young, I disliked onions. I disliked onions because my father disliked onions. For all I know, he disliked onions because his father disliked onions. There may have been whole generations of Nemans going back to the reign of King Mindaugas who disliked onions solely because it was a family tradition.
At some point, I realized I had been eating onions all along in food that people had cooked for me, and I did not mind them at all. They added a certain something to the meal, an undercurrent that set the tone for a dish. I came to realize that they are vital in cooking. Vital, and delicious.
But every once in a while, I still find myself reacting to a few foods with a prejudice left over from when I was a child. Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have decided I did not like meatloaf. Perhaps my mother made one meatloaf that was overcooked and bland.
To this day, all meatloaf strikes me as bland and overcooked. Even if it is well-seasoned and perfectly juicy, I will push it away. I recognize that I do this based on an opinion formed before I could write in cursive, but I don’t seem capable of moving past it.
I know and even like some people who can’t stand food that is mushy or can’t bear to have distinct foods touch each other on the plate. I recently learned that an old friend has such an aversion to green peppers that her husband pushes all the green peppers to one side of the skillet when he cooks a meal.
Not red or yellow peppers, incidentally. Just green.
Clearly, these childish aversions border on the irrational. And I can understand the impulse; I have a couple of irrational fears, myself (heights, things touching my eyes). These are glitches deep in our psyches, forgotten scars on our subconscious, that hold sway over our adult selves. We are helpless to do anything about them.
I can’t stand the thought of anything touching my eyes. My friend can’t stand the thought of anything she eats touching green peppers. It’s the same pathology, deeply rooted in our youngest years.
Fortunately, this adult reliance on childhood tastes runs the other direction, too. As adults, many of us return repeatedly and reliably to the foods of our youth. Think of the near-universal fixation on macaroni and cheese. Comfort food is just our favorite foods from childhood.
For me, that would be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I probably could have eaten one every day of my youth, if my mother hadn’t been so infuriatingly conscientious about balanced diets and eating the right things.
Peanut butter is made from vegetables. Jelly is made from fruit. What’s the problem?
I still love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and could probably eat one or three every day if it weren’t for all of those calories. But I’m certain my adult enjoyment of them is in no way related to my childhood tastes.
Peanut butter and jelly is just the perfect combination. That’s all.