Recently read this in an article about Norman Mailer's house: "The kitchenette is small, and Mr. Mailer tells visitors that his father, on those occasions when he cooked, favored stuffed mushrooms and a breakfast of hash, eggs and pears that he learned as an Army cook in World War II."
It's fun to imagine Norman Mailer whipping up eggs and hash in his last apartment, which (due to the kind of eccentricity the world forgives in brilliant writers) he'd decorated to resemble a boat, complete with crow's nest. (How Mailer managed to convince a NYC housing association to forgive his breaking the roof of his brownstone to construct this home is a more interesting question)
But the actual breakfast sounds a little revolting. Eggs and hash are fine, but with pears? And stuffed mushrooms?
But this brought me around to the topic of comfort foods, and what makes them comfortable. Today one of my colleagues brought her battered old recipe diary into work so I could copy out a few recipes. The book is bent at the edges and stained with toor daal, but I can still read the recipes that she wrote down in a rush three weeks before her wedding, expecting that the first thing she'd be expected to do in her new home would be cook. (Which she'd never done before.) Writing out these recipes was one of my co-workers last acts as a single woman, and I can tell she enjoys the idea of passing her knowledge down to me.
It might be a stretch to refer to Chicken Malai Tikka and Biryani as comfort foods, but that is what she ate in her Mom's Muslim house (ok, not what she ate, because she's vegetarian, but it is what everyone else ate...god, this support has wandered away from its thesis but oh well)
I can think of several foods that I ate as a kid that still hold sentimental charm for me, as well as foods that I eat as an adult because they satisfy a craving that runs deeper than hunger. For example: cheese and salsa, both of which I eat straight from the packet (Unless someone is watching, in which case I'll use a knife or a spoon :)
In an episode of "Sex and the City," one of the characters mentions "secret single rituals." This sounds mysterious (Adult baptisms? Santeria?) but she's talking about the food she eats when no one else is around. In her case, crackers with jam, eaten standing up at the kitchen counter. (I don't even know if this would count as a food to anyone except a Manhattanite who uses her oven as a storage space for sweaters, but...)
Which brings me at last (hallelujah!) to the point of this ramble. Sure, the traditional idea of "comfort food" is something that one ate as a kid, the classic being grandma's apple pie/apple latkes/apple chapatis (okay, not this last one) or whatever. But we also create comfort foods as adults. We are constantly in the process, in fact, of attaching emotional status to food. (For example, when I reflect on the chicken steaks that recently gave me food poisoning, I start to feel uncontrollable nausea...even though I thought the steaks were delicious at the time).
My co-worker feels an emotional bond to her chicken malai tikka recipe because it was one of the first recipes she ever made for her new family, even though my co-worker has never actually eaten chicken malai tikka. That Sex and the City character certainly didn't start eating crackers standing up when she was a kid. That was clearly some caffeine-inspired desperation at work, the sort of conditions only adulthood can create. Norman Mailer only learned how to make eggs with pears and hash when he was an adult in the Army. And I...well...*mumblessomethingaboutCHEESE*
Says Wikipedia: "The term "comfort food" (first used, according to Webster's Dictionary, in 1977) refers to foods consumed to achieve some level of improved emotional status, whether to relieve negative psychological affect or to increase positive feeling." (Yes, Wikipedia has an entry for comfort food.)
Which explains why grandma might now find her own apple pie a comfort food, even though she never ate it as a kid. It also lays waste to the theory that our food preferences are in any way static. Our emotions change overnight, so our emotional responses to food can change just as quickly. Yesterday's comfort food might induce nausea tomorrow, but the good news (hopefully!) is that the reverse is equally likely.
It's fun to imagine Norman Mailer whipping up eggs and hash in his last apartment, which (due to the kind of eccentricity the world forgives in brilliant writers) he'd decorated to resemble a boat, complete with crow's nest. (How Mailer managed to convince a NYC housing association to forgive his breaking the roof of his brownstone to construct this home is a more interesting question)
But the actual breakfast sounds a little revolting. Eggs and hash are fine, but with pears? And stuffed mushrooms?
But this brought me around to the topic of comfort foods, and what makes them comfortable. Today one of my colleagues brought her battered old recipe diary into work so I could copy out a few recipes. The book is bent at the edges and stained with toor daal, but I can still read the recipes that she wrote down in a rush three weeks before her wedding, expecting that the first thing she'd be expected to do in her new home would be cook. (Which she'd never done before.) Writing out these recipes was one of my co-workers last acts as a single woman, and I can tell she enjoys the idea of passing her knowledge down to me.
It might be a stretch to refer to Chicken Malai Tikka and Biryani as comfort foods, but that is what she ate in her Mom's Muslim house (ok, not what she ate, because she's vegetarian, but it is what everyone else ate...god, this support has wandered away from its thesis but oh well)
I can think of several foods that I ate as a kid that still hold sentimental charm for me, as well as foods that I eat as an adult because they satisfy a craving that runs deeper than hunger. For example: cheese and salsa, both of which I eat straight from the packet (Unless someone is watching, in which case I'll use a knife or a spoon :)
In an episode of "Sex and the City," one of the characters mentions "secret single rituals." This sounds mysterious (Adult baptisms? Santeria?) but she's talking about the food she eats when no one else is around. In her case, crackers with jam, eaten standing up at the kitchen counter. (I don't even know if this would count as a food to anyone except a Manhattanite who uses her oven as a storage space for sweaters, but...)
Which brings me at last (hallelujah!) to the point of this ramble. Sure, the traditional idea of "comfort food" is something that one ate as a kid, the classic being grandma's apple pie/apple latkes/apple chapatis (okay, not this last one) or whatever. But we also create comfort foods as adults. We are constantly in the process, in fact, of attaching emotional status to food. (For example, when I reflect on the chicken steaks that recently gave me food poisoning, I start to feel uncontrollable nausea...even though I thought the steaks were delicious at the time).
My co-worker feels an emotional bond to her chicken malai tikka recipe because it was one of the first recipes she ever made for her new family, even though my co-worker has never actually eaten chicken malai tikka. That Sex and the City character certainly didn't start eating crackers standing up when she was a kid. That was clearly some caffeine-inspired desperation at work, the sort of conditions only adulthood can create. Norman Mailer only learned how to make eggs with pears and hash when he was an adult in the Army. And I...well...*mumblessomethingaboutCHEESE*
Says Wikipedia: "The term "comfort food" (first used, according to Webster's Dictionary, in 1977) refers to foods consumed to achieve some level of improved emotional status, whether to relieve negative psychological affect or to increase positive feeling." (Yes, Wikipedia has an entry for comfort food.)
Which explains why grandma might now find her own apple pie a comfort food, even though she never ate it as a kid. It also lays waste to the theory that our food preferences are in any way static. Our emotions change overnight, so our emotional responses to food can change just as quickly. Yesterday's comfort food might induce nausea tomorrow, but the good news (hopefully!) is that the reverse is equally likely.
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