If you can learn anything standing in front of a magazine stand right now, it's that we collectively appear to need some comforting. Martha Stewart, Real Simple, Rachael Ray, Gourmet and others are serving up comfort food, comfort favorites, healthier comforts. Is it just February? After a month of resolution-keeping are we ready to forget about our cholesterol and dive head first into a crock of mac and cheese? Or is it that now, perhaps more than anytime in recent memory, all of us need someone to hold our hand, tell us everything is going to be all right and then hand us a bowl of buttermilk mashed potatoes?
Speaking only for myself, I know I have never been more interested in casseroles (click here for the very best potato casserole), Mennonite recipes, and meatloaf. And in some ways, I haven't really wanted to step into the kitchen and cook these things myself, but instead have a magical mother figure who appears at whim with an apron and a soft voice, who is always available to cut up an apple or put some water on for tea, who doesn't mind dashing out into the cold for more toilet paper. She also does the dishes, cleans the bathroom, and then vanishes when I want to be alone.
But I am an adult. We're all adults. And even though I do have a mother who is always ready to put on water to boil, she doesn't---thank goodness for both of us---live in my closet. As we grow up, we are supposed to learn to do these things for ourselves---to comfort ourselves---whether through a hot drawn bath or a grilled cheese sandwich and cup of tomato soup (wow, that sounds really good). But that's the thing about comfort itself: while it's a badge of adulthood to have the know-how of self-comfort, it seems to feel best and taste best and mean the most when it comes from someone else. Haven't you ever wanted someone to bend down and slip off your shoes for you in the evening or fluff your pillows and then pull back a corner of the sheets in a warm welcome to just slip in? Have you ever noticed that a sandwich made by someone else seems to taste so much better?
I started to write today meaning to ask you what your favorite comfort foods are, and now look where we are. We've gone way beyond food, haven't we? So on this Monday, with the week fresh ahead of us, even if we feel defeated before its really begun, can we think about comfort for a second? What do you do to get yourself feeling right again when the world feels wrong? Any rituals or traditions that make you feel cared for? And oh---why would we avoid it?---what's your recipe for comfort in the kitchen? Tell all.
