Mmmm cozy

I am cuddled up on my couch with a cup of tea. It's a Friday night. I lead an exciting life. You have every right to be jealous. For some reason I have had this uncanny interest in the term comfort food today. I was actually upset that I didn't know the origin behind this term. Somehow I'm having trouble picturing a little old woman (with a Babushka on of course) in Eastern Europe 100 years ago, saying, "Chicken noodle soup and homemade rye bread, ahhhh comfort food."

Turns out I was right. According to the Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, the term comfort food is a 21st century phenomenon. Their reasoning for the creation of such a classification was, that life got more stressful with additional technology, and people needed these homey feeling foods to calm them after a long day. I think I agree.

Let's go back to my babushka lady. I'm thinking Stone Soup, if you need a visual reference. Why would this woman who spends her day cooking a meal for her family (with no emails, phone calls, or text messages to compete with her attention) need to be comforted at the end of the day? Now let's picture my mom who wakes up, lets the dog out, goes on the computer to send out emails, starts my sister with school, goes back to the computer to grade essays for her online class, teaches my sister some more, takes the dog out, makes lunch, sees a few appointments, prepares for a lecture, and then makes dinner. If you got lost somewhere in the middle there, maybe you see the need for comfort food in our society.

Unfortunately the other thing that The Encyclopedia of Food and Culture brought up about the invention of comfort food as a term, was that it was convenient for marketers. A-HA I knew it!!! Behind ever cutesy phrase that embodies a feeling so perfectly is a brilliant marketer. I know this because one of my good friends is a marketing major; I've watched him ooze brilliance, and as my jaw dropped I realized everything I had ever believed was created by a marketer. Think of how much money "comfort food" has made over the years. I have bought at least 2 cookbooks simply because I was having a bad day and couldn't pass up the thought of a new comfort food recipe.

The funny thing about this whole comfort food thing is that it means different things to different people. I had a wonderful moment in the grocery store with a kind old Portuguese man today. He was scowling at the same chestnuts I was scowling at. Chestnuts are comfort food for me, because my great-grandfather had a giant chestnut tree. Every year we would go and pick chestnuts. I would peel them and eat them right there (sometimes finding out that at the middle of the chestnut I had worked so hard for and had eaten half of has another little something eating it too). The man I met today had the same emotional draw to chestnuts. When we started talking about them, his eyes lit up; and he told me how he loved roasting them.

Thankfully it doesn't matter why a food is comforting to you. The real joy in comfort food is biting into a warm fried perogie, closing your eyes, and imagining home (wherever that is for you). How else do you explain that feeling other than comforting. Ahh those marketing majors are just so smart.

Happy Eating!!!

Emily