Comfort Food as... Comfort Food

My Grandfather is turning 89 this year. This means he is old. Very old. Meaning he lived in an older, simpler, amazing time when a bowl of kake udon cost only 10 cents in Korea. These days udon is one of the very few dishes he is able to eat, and likes to eat at the same time. As a formerly 5'6" man who due to age is now 5'4" that weighs 120 lbs., there's not much left of him except super pruney skin and rattling antique bones, and hot soups seem to be good for cold bones and uncomfortable dentures. Thankfully he is as mentally agile as he was when kake udon cost 10 cents, though his hearing has not fared as well. On the phone one time, my mom was trying to ask him if he wanted some fish we had bought at the store. She tried "saeng-sun" first, but he didn't get it. Then she tried "mool-goh-gee", but that didn't work either. By this point, she was frustrated out of her mind, and started screaming into the phone "Fiiiiisshhh!!! Fiiissshhhhh!!!!" repeatedly. Listening to this exchange in the next room over, I was rolling on my bed, in a silent fit of laughter.

Trying to choose a restaurant to eat with my Grandfather isn't very difficult. I can count on one hand the number of regular restaurants we frequent with him, including Yashima, my harabuhjee's favorite udon place. Today after his doctor's visit, I brought him there. As we were waiting for the elevator to take us from the parking garage to the restaurant above, he turned to me and said, "Hmm, you brought me to the good udon place, hmm?" (From this dialogue, he kind of sounds like Yoda... he even looks like him too...)

After our dishes had been delivered and we were half way through our meal (don't let his size fool you: he's like the super-skinny Japanese guy that can pack away a thousand hot dogs; he finishes pretty much everything that is put before him), I asked him, "How is the food?"

He looked up, wiped the soup off of his straight white beard, and replied, "The soup here is the best. When I was a young man, around 19 and 20, a bowl of kake udon cost 10 cents. I ate a lot of kake udon then. I think it became a habit".

Huh. A hot, filling soup that not only gave nourishment and comfort when he was young, but also comforts and satisfies in old age. What a concept. Are the foods we are drawn to when the weather gets cold, when stress overwhelms, or when tiredness seeps in, the foods that not only comfort us now, but the exact foods that remind us of more innocent, comparatively worry-less times?

When I left to live in East Asia for two years, I took a box of Fruity Pebbles with me. I opened the box sparingly, making sure the vacuum-seal on the IKEA container was tightly closed every time I used it. I pulled it out when I needed a pick-me-up, when the grayness of East Asian winter got too much for me, when I was stressed and tired and overwhelmed with work. Fruity Pebbles is my comfort food, because each sugary crunchy bite makes me feel like the kid that begged her mom to buy a box at the grocery store, who rejoiced when the puppy-dog eyes finally worked, who couldn't wait for morning to come so I could break out the milk and cereal bowl for that first delicious bite. It reminds me of easier times, when the biggest worry of the day was mom catching me watching TV when I'm not suppose to, when sandy shoes and dirty shirts were the objects of her censure. I wish my biggest worries today were TV and dirty clothes.

It's amazing that tactile sensory inputs can trigger such emotions and memories in the brain, that not only affect our physical body, but our mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies as well. When people talk about comfort food, gooey mac-n-cheese, crispy chicken wings, buttery mashed potatoes, and that oh-so-delish pint of your favorite ice cream flavor immediately jump to mind. But immediately attached to those cravings are very adult feelings of guilt, torture, yearning, and denial also along for the ride. I think we all need to remember the true meaning of comfort food. Comfort food is for comfort, not for guilt. I don't advocate a daily indulgence in all of the foods mentioned above, but I think we all deserve a bit of guilt-torture-yearning-and-denial-free indulgence in our favorite comfort food once in a while. So what if that bottle of cream soda is worth 180 nutritionally empty calories? So what if there are 10 grams of fat in that Snickers bar? It's going to be the only Snickers bar you're going to have this month. And after trying to be a responsible adult day in and day out, you deserve those next 10 minutes of gooey chocolately Snickers-comfort-heaven.