It's Not Just About Comfort Anymore...

By Deborah Lambeth

Ask anybody, what their favorite comfort food is and something will immediately come to their mind. For me, I go beyond a comfort "food" and I have a comfort "meal." It's London broil cooked in mushroom and onion gravy, glazed carrots, fresh tomatoes, broccoli casserole, real mashed potatoes, yeast rolls, and some kind of ooey-gooey dessert. Why is that my comfort meal? For lots of reasons. Carbs, carbs, carbs is one! The main thing, though, is that those foods bring back memories of family times-of enjoying a good meal, enjoying each other. The meal evokes a certain sense of security.

Many people find solace in chocolate. For some, there is not only a psychological reason behind the comfort the sweetness of chocolate brings, but there is also a physical response, in that it heightens a person's mood. However, that mood enhancer only lasts a short while. And as the sugar high wears off, a person's mood can become lower than before they consumed the chocolate.

Many comfort foods are regional in nature. Southerners, for example, might favor fried chicken and barbecue when they need something to bring them peace. Hoagies and chowder might do it for New Englanders, while people from the upper Midwest find solace in casseroles and hot dishes. Comfort food has always been a staple of the most American of informal restaurants, the diner.

Looking beyond the comfort of food, though, it's important to find out what brings a person a sense of peace and security. There is always something emotional behind a person's favorite comfort food. A friend of mine's comfort food is lemonade. Strange comfort food, isn't it? But it reminds her of summer. And for her, summer was a fun time of playing at the beach, of planting flowers and watching them grow, a season of renewal and growth. For her, the smell of lemons brings back those memories.

Certain smells associated with things as well as visual memories can bring us comfort. I have often talked with others about my grandmother and the smell of her kitchen in the summer. I have visual recollections of red tomatoes sitting on the windowsill and the earthy smell of her kitchen. I can remember sitting on her front porch and shelling butterbeans. To this day, when I see fresh butterbeans, I think how sore my thumbs were when I was shelling them back then. I can remember my brother climbing up in her pecan tree and shaking the pecans down onto sheets laid underneath the tree. Because my grandmother was very influential in my life, the things that remind me of her are very comforting-and some of those things center around food.

Certain things bring us comfort because they take us away from the "here and now" and remind us of an important and poignant time in our lives "back then." Just by a smell, a visual remembrance, or a taste of something we can be instantly transported to a safe haven, a place of comfort, a place where familiarity and good memories abound. Comfort's good...now pass me those potatoes!