Comfort food is more than macaroni and cheese. Comfort food is more than meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Comfort food is any dish that you want to return to time and again to re-savor and re-enjoy with friends, family or all alone when you need something to wrap you in warm and familiar flavors. In order to really understand the definition of comfort food (at least mine anyway) is to rely on one simple criterion common to any comfort food experience. It’s gotta make you feel better than you did fifteen minutes ago. Something more and more people are looking for these days. And comfort food is as good and or better for you than comfort booze or comfort heroine. In our collective American psyche our comfort food is more likely to be something like a bowl of Cream of Tomato soup with a buttery Grilled Cheese Sandwich rather than a bowl of chewy tripe and noodles in a clear spicy broth as it's made on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. Yet both are considered to be comfort food.
Whenever I get immersed in the smell of homemade cookies, it lights up a memory for me of opening the door to the house on a snowy day and getting surrounded by the fragrance of warm chocolate and vanilla. Even the look of a cold glass of milk standing next to a thick slice of Chocolate Cake awakens the feeling of that spectacular day when the little red haired girl with freckles smiled at me for the very first time. I wish I remembered her name as well as I do the cake. Whatever we hold in our bank of pleasant memories, comfort food is made to evoke them in some very personal ways. How we create these memories today has fundamentally changed from the way they were created a generation ago though. Our dining table at home back then was not only the focus of our day, but the landing space where I first saw, smelled and tasted the foods that I’ve come to call comfort food.
But in today’s fragmented world the restaurant table has replaced the dining or kitchen table at home. The fast food restaurant, casual restaurant or neighborhood eatery has become the weekday gathering place for friends and families. That Rockwellian image of a family gathered around platters of home cooked food has been replaced by food in a bucket or a cardboard box. At best it seems homemade dinners these days are quickly prepared from frozen kits or maybe something scooped into a plastic container at the grocery store. Like it or not we’re now more likely to build these memories of special moments with food prepared in a factory or restaurant kitchen. Not a bad deal since it’s been in a one restaurant kitchen or another where I’ve made my career for the last 40 years. So this cultural change has created a whole new genre of comfort food. Cooking at home has now switched places with restaurants in so many of our lives that what was once a special occasion to dine out is now the special occasion to dine in with home cooked food. So unless you want your kids or family to fondly remember you for the time you shared Chicken Fingers at T.G.I. Friday’s or opened a bag of pasta and vegetables warmed it in a skillet and called it home cooking, pay attention to the food around you. Wouldn’t it be nice for everyone to have a comfort food or two in their lives worthy of sharing?
By the way I’m writing this with the t.v. on in the background and I just happened to turn to Glenn Beck ranting on about the coming tide of Islamic imperialism. I just wanted to say I’m so tired of the alarmist crap coming out of the mouths of people like Beck, Bachman, Hannity etc. Shut up already and let the grown ups do their work.
