Comfort Food

We’re all missing something these days. Missed someones, missed celebrations, missed mothers, missed meals. We’re trying to fill up those spaces with Zoom calls and sourdough babies named Patrice and HIIT workouts. Food has proven to be a sliver of normalcy and comfort in these “unprecedented times”.  

In my family, food is love. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that “food is love” is sort of our motto. It came up just last week in our family group chat while scheduling our Sunday Zoom:

My family has a problem with food. It’s something in our genes. We’re mostly a heavy-set people, who tend to hold weight well. We have the healthy bones of our Polish peasant forefathers and mothers, made thick to survive a Winnipeg prairie winter, made strong by a steady diet of perogies, doused in melted butter, and kielbasa (pronounced koo-ba-sah). Their work ethic and love of carbs and an untethered hospitality have been shared down, generation to generation, since they immigrated to Canada (and probably well before). 

There was always too much food. We’d visit my Baba’s house from out of the province and be welcomed by a feast, no matter the time we’d roll in. Even though we said we weren’t hungry. That no, it’s ok, we ate on the plane. That we’ll get in late and just want to go to bed. 

Everything made from scratch (except the Jeannie’s cake, because you can’t make that), and everything made right. Want more? Take more. Have another. There’s more downstairs in the freezer. I like to think that my Baba was trying to feed us all the meals we missed having together since our last visit, in one single night.

Ribs and pickles and cheddar cheese. Cabbage rolls, ham, and perogies leftover from Easter. Their sour cream soft dough, kneaded, left to rest. Filled with cheddar and potato (the only kind of perogy that matters). Dough cut into circles with an upside-down glass, then filled and folded over: dough half-moons. The fingertips then licked to pinch, to seal the dough. This, I’m always reminded, is not actually done, (even though I remember doing so when I was younger); but you can tell people you did it, just to mess with them. Each little package of love is then boiled until it floats, then served with butter and caramelized onions. The process takes too much time: at least one long afternoon. 

I’m turning more and more into my grandparents each day. They all lived through The Great Depression, then hid canned goods in crawlspaces, their whole basement stuffed with beans and beets and cat food. Two deep freezers, forever full. Hoarding in case hunger happened again, so it wouldn’t happen to their children. I live in a small apartment in the city and don’t have a basement or crawlspace or room for a deep freeze, but most space I do have is taken up by canned treasures. Only one trip to the grocery store every other week. 

Becoming them stresses me out. My stock of people has been killed by butter and sugar more than once. Take my Robin Williams lookalike grandfather, who--after a good lunch of kub on rye, with cheddar cheese and mustard--would nap with us on the couch, our faces hot and red, tucked in a sleeper hold in the crook of his arm. He had a heart attack at 59 as he drove down the highway. He pulled to the side of the road to die. It was before the time of cell phones. I always like how he pulled over; I imagine he didn’t want to cause any accidents, to hurt anyone. 

To me, his death foretold the future of my mom, of my brother, of me. We share the same round face as my grandfather. I’d get anxious every time I’d see my parents take too many perogies at Christmas dinner, or order anything fried at a restaurant. To me, food has foreshadowed death. I hated how so much our lives revolved around it. 

Traveling? Let’s find the top places, the off-the-beaten-path places, the places where the locals go. 

Celebrating something? A birthday? Graduation? A new job? A passing grade? Here’s your favorite dinner and that dessert you said you liked. 

Oh, your friend is sick? Here’s a batch of banana muffins. 

New house? Here’s bread and salt and wine, it’s tradition. 

Heartbroken? This is my chicken soup. Take, eat. 

Since isolation, I’ve really recognized the power of a meal at the table. The alchemy that turns time, story, place, and ingredients into welcome. I’ve recognized the gifts that have been given to me and to countless other friends and strangers invited to grace my parents’ always open dining room table. The gifts of attention and laughter and flavor and life. This is something I miss so much right now. 

My family cooks and eats and shares because we don’t know any other way to give ourselves. We can’t not feed each other and we can’t not eat. It’s taken some time for me to see this as a blessing, not a curse. That the intention behind my family’s feeding is not gluttony alone, but also giving. That there’s a tangibility to love and it can be given in a Tupperware. To spend a whole afternoon filling and pinching dough for someone else is nothing short of saintly. 

My husband’s a nurse and he’s out there helping, really helping, helping people to stay alive. And I’m at home, sitting in the sun, bored again, and again, and again feeling alone and utterly useless. Then, I kill thirty minutes with Claire, learning how to make Poptarts, or watch Alex and Christina Try Everything on the Menu at a Famous NYC Sandwich Shop, or try to convince my husband that Brad Leone and my brother are the same person (my husband doesn’t yet “get” Brad Leone). And in my inadequacy, when I think there’s nothing I can do to help, I’m reminded where I came from. Of how it is that we love. 

And I can bake cookies for the neighbor upstairs whose brother just died. I can share a golden lump of precious butter with another who just ran out. I can talk about Pantry Pasta, again and again, with my best friend because there’s nothing else to talk about, because nothing else is new, because we’ve already told each other, again and again (in other words), I love you and please don’t die. 

So, when it’s 1 am and I’m watching another Gourmet Makes, asking myself why it is that I so often return to the Test Kitchen, I’m overwhelmed by gratitude that this love of food is part of who I am. That there’s green sauce to make and crispy skin salmon to be had. 

In other words, I guess this is to say: thank you, Bon Appetit, for being something like friends. For coming into my kitchen and reminding me of something other than fear. For helping me remember the people who first taught me that food is love. For being bread and salt and wine to me. For reminding me that I can be useful and good with what I have on hand.