by Denise Calaman

Created on: January 19, 2010   Last Updated: February 23, 2010

Comfort foods are very much like long lost friends. They treat us well and know exactly what we need. They never seem to abandon us, they heal our bruised egos and downed spirits and they always seem to satisfy us.  They warm us, and strengthen us, healing us from the inside out.  One of my favorite memories of comfort foods is from childhood. I learned the value comfort foods when I was very young.  Maybe cooking comfort foods was a way of medicating way back when but my mother always seemed to have a big pot or a cast iron skillet of something hearty on the stove in order to combat bad days at school, illness or the chill that set into our bones during the long, cold, Pennsylvania winters. 

 My mother would spend an hour bundling my brother and I up in order to play outdoors in the winter.  After a snowstorm when the snow was fresh and still unspoiled by human footprints was the best time to play outdoors.  We’d play for hours until even the layers upon layers of clothing that we were wearing could no longer protect us from the cold.  Even the snow eventually found its way to our bare skin.  When we’d come in from outdoors we’d unbundle and run around in just our long johns.  And it never failed.  My mother would have chicken noodle soup, grilled cheese sandwiches and saltine crackers smothered with peanut butter waiting for us at our kitchen table.  If we were really lucky she would spread marshmallow, or fluff as it is called, on top of the peanut butter so we could enjoy “fluffernutter” crackers. 

 My favorite comfort meal of my mother’s is her homemade macaroni and cheese.  She only makes it in the winter.  I’d beg her all spring and summer long to make macaroni and cheese but she would always say, “No, that’s a winter dish.”  Macaroni and cheese would often be waiting for us when we came home from the bus stop when it was especially cold.    But every so often when I would have a bad day at school or if I was ill macaroni and cheese often awaited me at the dinner table just as fried chicken awaited my brother during his troubling times.  I have tried to replicate her macaroni and cheese.  I know exactly how she makes it but for some reason it doesn’t taste as good as mom’s.  Maybe she added mother’s love as an extra ingredient to give it the soothing, satisfying flavor that I remember. 

 We all have comfort foods that we seek out.  They don’t have to be warm and hearty.  These days I often go for a bag of Chips Ahoy to settle my nerves.  But it’s the comfort foods of my childhood that I still crave when I am in an emotional rut.  I only hope that as my sons grow up they can write about the comfort foods that I made them when they were younger.  And I hope that they say, “You know, it just doesn’t taste like moms.” 

Learn more about this author, Denise Calaman.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.