Comfort Food...

Just reading the title I can picture the roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, cooked carrots and macaroni & cheese. Mmmmm…good.

That’s the phrase ‘comfort food’ to me but deep down inside my comfort food is not the warm stuff…it’s the cold stuff. Ice cream. Ice cream is my sore throat remedy, my cure for the common cold, my first in food after an upset stomach. I love ice cream…my latest favorite is Breyer’s Brownie Mud Pie… Chocolate frozen dairy dessert with brownies, chocolatey coated almonds and a caramel swirl.

I don’t think kids really have a comfort food…you can ask them what food makes them feel good and the answer is generally a favorite food. Pizza for J and hmmm…mmmm…let me think….ok, well nothing then for S. Perhaps they need more life experiences to be able to identify what is a true comfort food – no, that isn’t it, is it?

The comfort food for any kid is not yet a food at all. It’s still an item. What do they carry everywhere, what do they not want to sleep without. Their comfort foods are soul foods or rather foods for the soul in the very strictest sense of the description. Grownups can’t pull that off, so somewhere in the ‘growing up’ process we learn to substitute a food. Considering the obesity rate, perhaps adults would have been better off had they continued to tote around their old blankies and dolls.

What are the other 'comfort foods' in my home? With J it has always been a plush creature that keeps her warm and fuzzy deep inside and mostly it has been a favorite teddy bear that was purchased for $5 in Gatlinburg on Mother’s Day Weekend when she was about 18 months old.

With S, well – it’s a ratty, old, very lightweight, oversized Tshirt-y pajama top of mine. ‘Shirtie’ came into existence the first week we were home from China. The baby girl would suck on my shoulder and I cared not for it. I gave her the pajama shirt she loved so much and it is still her good friend.

Shirtie is a girl and she has a voice…and though in my head that is very odd, I am perfectly accepting that Teddy is a boy and he tells J some very wise things. I guess the difference is Teddy comes with a face. The only talking my ice cream ever does is when it calls to me from the freezer...

So here they are, the 'comfort foods’ at our house.

Photo 30 - Day 43