Of Comfort and Food
how the ritual of eating serves to alleviate distress
Sundays were for food. Sure, they were for gatherings, but the gatherings centered around food; the preparing, the cooking, the serving, the eating, the cleaning up. Sundays at grandma’s were a ritual and that ritual revolved around pasta and gravy (sorry, we call it gravy here) and meatballs and wine and cousins. There was a certain comfort in that ritual, and I came to associate the pasta and all its accouterments with a good, warm feeling.
There were many other comfort foods along the way to adulthood. My mother’s mashed potatoes on holidays. My father’s chili on a snowy day. Grilled cheese and soup after school. Cereal on a Sunday evening. Waffles and ice cream in front of the tv. All these foods represented a feeling of comfort and I spent a good portion of my young adult/adult life trying to replicate that comfort when I needed it. And it seemed like I always needed it. When my depression was at its worst, I sought comfort in food. When my anxiety peaked, I looked to comfort foods to calm me down. When my mood swings hit a low cycle, it was the comfort foods of my youth — and foods I found comfort in later on — that buoyed me.
My relationship with food became an utterly dysfunctional one. I no longer ate to sustain life. I ate to recreate moods, emotions. I ate my way out of distress. I survived near breakdowns by cooking and eating pasta and gravy. The smell of the meal cooking, the process of making it, took my mind off other things and brought to mind a place where life was damn near idyllic, when family was gathered and I felt loved and nourished.
I write in past tense but the truth is, I still seek comfort in food. I still try to feed my emotions with calories, to recreate a sense of well being by eating, because eating is in my mind a ritual that means warmth, love, family — even when doing it alone. Eating, especially eating comfort foods, is an act of self preservation. It quells my depression, it soothes my anxiety. It’s a temporary fix, one that layered with medication provides a brief cure from mental distress.
Like most of my relationships in life, my relationship with food is dependent. I plan my day around eating. I am thinking of one meal while eating another. Food is sustenance to everyone but to me it’s sustenance both physical and mental. When I am eating, I feel good. The ritual of having a meal is the ritual of being comforted. I don’t really know how to replace it with something healthier.
I realize that all the scenarios I try to recreate with meals are scenarios from my childhood, a time when things were simple and joyful and easy. It’s the trials of being an adult — a depressed adult at that — that cause me to treat a bowl of homemade pasta as a time machine of sorts, where for just a minute I’m immersed in a vivid memory of cousins and happy noise and clandestine sips of wine, where everything was good and nothing hurt.
The past month has been emotionally difficult and true to form, I have reached to my pantry and fridge and even to DoorDash to help me through. I’ve been eating my way through grief and sadness, hoping that a slice of plain pizza or a Sunday night bowl of cereal will somehow eradicate my feelings, if only temporarily.
I recognize that my relationship with food is not healthy emotionally or physically. I work on finding other ways to comfort myself. I work on finding other ways to recreate the serenity a simple grilled cheese and soup combo used to bring me. And I realize what’s missing from the equation — the thing that making the soup or chili or pasta myself — is missing is other people. Whenever I reach for the comfort food, it’s solitary. I cook by myself. I sit in front of the tv eating chocolate pudding by myself. I let the food comfort me, where maybe I should be letting other people do the comforting. Instead of holding my loved ones at arm’s length I should let them in when the darkness hits, when anxiety comes calling, when random sadness envelops me.
I could give it a try. Right after I make a pot of chili.
[tell me about your comfort foods]
Grilling is a big comfort for me (which presents a big problem in winter), but I also love making a big batch of green chili pork stew or chili. I think it's partially the comfort of the food, but also the recognition that "hey, things might feel awful right now, but at least I can still do this." The accomplishment, however minor, also helps.
For me, comfort comes less from sense memory - there’s some of that with my grandmother’s Thanksgiving oyster dressing - and more from the ritual of preparation and process. I read your piece while drinking the coffee I prepare the same way every morning, by grinding fresh roasted whole beans, and brewing in a French press. The ritual of making the coffee provides more benefit to me than the caffeine. My go-to kitchen therapy is a whole chicken. Spatchcock, season, dry, grill (fair weather) or roast (poor weather), then slow cook a big pot of stock with the detritus. Cooking something that gives so much, like a whole chicken, gives me an honest feeling of gratitude. And the delicious smells from the cooking is legit aromatherapy.