ladysprite | Food Thoughts

Food is a fascinating and wonderful thing. I like to cook, I like to bake, and most of all I like to eat. When I was in vet school I discovered, much to my amazement and horror, that there were people who didn't actually enjoy food, or eating, which I can't understand for the life of me, but planning meals and reading recipes and trying new cuisines are an important source of fun for me. And I started wondering today about what makes something comfort food, rather than 'food I remember from when I was a kid' or 'food I really like.'

My mother is an amazing cook, and I have fond memories of meals when I was a kid, but most of it doesn't leap to mind when I think of comfort food - for all her talent, she was still raising two children, working three jobs, supporting our family more or less singlehandedly, and burdened with two picky eaters. Most of our meals involved frozen fish sticks, or spaghetti sauce from a jar, or Hamburger Helper. When she gets the chance, she can bake amazing and elaborate dishes, but that's not most of what I remember from childhood.

I have foods that I love, too, that don't quite fit the description. I adore lobster, and cheesecake, and blackberries, and anything with scallops, but none of them make me feel safe and comfy and better all over like good comfort food does.

Most of the foods that do aren't quite favorites, exactly, and aren't foods I loved as a kid (with the exception of fried egg sandwiches on toasted rye bread, and that's an easy one to figure out - it was the only thing my father knew how to cook, and one of my few unfailingly positive memories of him, on the rare mornings that my mom would sleep late. Comfort food for me means homemade macaroni and cheese, or red beans and rice, or baked potato soup, or sour cream coffee cake. It's not all warm starchy stuff, though; it's also cucumbers stuffed with tuna salad, and tomatoes fresh from the garden, and sauteed yellow squash. It's interesting; as much as I'm a dessert junkie, almost everything I think of as comforting is savory.

I guess, for me, the comfort is as much in the making of the food as it is in the eating of it. Dinner ritual - pulling out a recipe I know by heart anyway, watching the cookbook fall open to a particular page or walking through garden rows I planted myself, taking shelter in the acts of slicing and stirring and spicing and tasting, until the finished product is the punctuation at the end of a sentence rewriting the day in a much better manner.

Interesting. I don't usually use this journal as an avenue for debate or information-gathering, but now I wonder if it's the same for other cooks, and if it is, what makes something comfort food for non-chefs. Opinions more than welcome.....

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When I have much stress in my life, I start cooking. I like to feed people. When I sent my sister a package of cookies last year, she said, "Thanks for all the cookies. What's bothering you?"

The foods that I call "comfort foods" are the ones that I learned how to make from someone in my family. I can grill and make chili like my stepfather. I make soup, potatoes, and stir fry like my mom. I can make just a few of the things that I've had at my grandparents' houses.

I don't eat very well during the week, because I'm usually only cooking for myself. When I get to be around other people on the weekends, I love finding new things to make. Sometimes they don't turn out so well, but almost anything can be improved with spices or different ingredients.

It sounds like you take *comfort* the act of cooking, as much as eating it, which I do too :-)

Comfort foods - I am far more "into" comfort foods in the winter, because for me it's things like beef stew, roasted veggies, hot chocolate, freshly baked bread (just made almond-apricot scones BTW).

I also have comfort junk food, including salt and vinegar potato chips, butterered and salted popcorn, and lime tortilla chips . ..

I'm a starch junkie, and I know it, but there are indeed certain foods where the making of them is as much a comfort as the eating. Making bread - especially my Grandmother's whole wheat bread - is a luxury I save for when I am both really stressed and can't stand the company of other people for fear of snarling at them. I commune with the flour and the eggs and the bacon grease, and most of all the yeast.

Yeast has become my friend as I get older - I have started wondering if it had no patience with me or I with it when I was a kid, but now that I have patience, I love yeast. I love the things I can make with it. And they comfort me greatly.

Fried plantains and beans are another comfort food, for when I am feeling cold and unloved. Hot and sour soup for when I'm sick. Etc, etc, etc.

I will be interested to hear if your non-cooking friends have the same view, or if it's just the eating/the smell of the preparation for them. I know of very few people who can resist walking into a house that smells of cookies, but that may just be the sugar.

I've been noticing that people who enjoy talking and thinking about food were the ones whose mothers (or sometimes fathers) are good cooks.

Yes, mostly I've made the same observation.

In my case, I don't have comfort foods. When I'm upset, I certainly don't want to be bothered with having to think about or do any cooking. It's as likely, if not more so, when I'm upset that I won't want to eat anything. If I do want to eat something, it varies what I want (or what's available), but I rarely have strong cravings for a particular food because of mood. That said, I do like food with a texture that requires biting off & chewing.

Aside from that, I enjoy a good meal - but it's as much, if not more so, about the company & talking as it is about food. (Probably why I never bother to cook for myself alone, when some cheese on good German style wholegrain rye bread or similar will see me sated so much easier.) Part of it is also simply that on my own, the task of eating on it's own will have me go bored & twitchy, so I mostly combine it with reading or watching a DVD/TV, when I haven't got company to share a meal with. Another part is probably that I'm a floor-/curl-up-on-sofa person and ams imply not entirely comfortable sitting on a chair at a table with my feet down on the floor.

My mother, while doing quite decent everyday food, hated housework, and did not enjoy cooking either, never taught me to cook. So, sadly, cooking is now something that to me is always battling with the underlying waste-of-time feeling, unless there's the reward of eating with company, or the "special event" situation of cooking in company or for someone else. (Which requires me not being tired, having the time to do the cooking & find a recipe/shopping beforehand...)

hmm. i always wondered what peopel meant when theytalked of comfort food. when iam upset, i eat. it absolutly doesn't matter what iam eating though as lo9ng as it is food i would notrmally eat (i will never eat a carrot voluntarily, even when very upset).

but there has never been certain foods i liked mroe then others... i wonder why?...

I'm a non-cook, but I love food. I don't really do the idea of "comfort food", and I'm not sure why. I have scads of foods that I adore, but I don't associate any of them with any particular emotional state. I simply don't map foods to emotional states. Generally, my body tells me what is wants; I get hungry for specific flavors or foods.

*shrug* It's not for lack of passion about food. I love eating, am food snob, and have a wide-ranging palate. But there isn't an mood mapping.

OTOH, flavors often have strong emotional memory associations for me (as is normal for all people.) Generally positive associations, memories of good times with friends and family.

"Comfort food" is a concept that's alien to me, so I'm always fascinated by other people's descriptions of it. When I'm upset, I can't eat. I often feel I've missed out on something by not being able to drown my sorrows in a pint of good ice cream.

I've been trying to figure out what my comfort foods are, and what makes them so. Like you, I think a large part of it comes from the process of preparing them.

One of the things I've realized is that most, and perhaps all of my comfort foods are meatless. I'm really okay with eating meat, as I often do, now, and I think some meat based dishes are delicious. I'm not sure if the absence of meat is something I need, per se, to derive comfort or if it was an accident of history that I stopped cooking meat for many years so soon after I was in my own house that I 'imprinted' on comfort foods that just happen to be meatless.

I like whole foods, made from scratch, using simple ingredients. When I bake bread, I start by milling the flour from wheat and rye berries. Having a fresh delicious reminder that I can go from simple ingredients to complex foods, and feel good about the process that got me there is comforting.

Probably my biggest comfort food is a meatloaf recipe my mom stumbled on when I was a kid/young teenager. It has since become my meatloaf recipe, and many of my friends have had the chance to enjoy it. For me, it's not just the meatloaf. It's also the things I serve with it: stuffing, spinach, biscuits, and a mushroom sauce.

I also make baked chicken with a cheese and bacon sauce. Again, the stuffing is a part of it, and in this case, my favorite part is soaking the stuffing in the sauce (which has a bit of bacon grease in it--healthy food be damned).

I'll also say I vastly prefer cooking for others than just cooking for myself. Cooking for myself often seems . . . selfish and pointless.

I don't have comfort foods. There are foods I particularly like, and there are foods I eat when I'm bored or snackish (cf. Doritos), but food has absolutely no emotional component for me whatever.

Hmm. I don't think this formula quite works for me. Some of my comfort foods are ones that I enjoy preparing -- our favorite Sirloin Tip recipe is like that, for example. But good Mac and Cheese has always been a deep comfort food for me, and I've never really done homemade yet -- a box of Annie's will do for me.

So I'm not sure what the common thread is for me, if there even is one...

Food Thoughts

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