I can’t find or even really make my comfort foods anymore. They taste of my grandfather’s impossible, magical, garden in summer, homemade sauces that still have fresh and dirt in the flavor notes, and meatballs made from his raised hares.
Or they taste like my mother’s chicken pot pies and casseroles, or chicken and dumplings that singed my tongue due to my impatience. Fried okra, fried chicken, and greens or green beans. Pink Stuff. And no one’s version, even mine, will do anything but pale in comparison.
There are more lost examples of these old comfort foods, tied to memories, some happy, many bittersweet, even more tragic.
Memory, nostalgia, and grief are my comfort foods. I eat them regularly when I sit with my coffee and a blank document page. Then I pour out my veins and tear ducts to create something I hope is bigger than myself. Something that might make the ancestors proud. Food is fuel, after all.
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