“Food is a lot of people’s therapy — when we say comfort food, we really mean that. It’s releasing dopamine and serotonin in your brain that makes you feel good.” — Brett Hoebel
Definition: “Food that provides consolation or a feeling of well-being, typically any with a high sugar or other carbohydrate content and associated with childhood or home cooking.”
Note: This reminiscence was originally written as a response to the prompt, ‘childhood comfort food’ for my Door County Write On LGBTQ+ Writers Group.
September in the Midwest is my favorite time of year. It marks the changing of the seasons, the end of summer and the beginning of fall; warm days and cool nights when one grabs their favorite sweatshirt or sweater while still wearing shorts — comfort and comfort food season.
It’s also the season of Farmer’s Markets and harvesting home vegetable gardens. Outdoor cookouts are soon replaced by kitchen crockpots and stockpots. For me, I begin to crave the comfort foods of my childhood. Mom was a home cook, simple recipes to feed a growing a family that were relatively easy, sometimes quick to prepare for a working mother, and used ingredients from the pantry and meat defrosted from the freezer. My parents ordered large cuts of beef and pork butchered to save money and store in the freezer.
Dane County Saturday Farmer’s Market on the Square
I’m a baby boomer who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. I’m the eldest child in a working-class family and became my mother’s sous chef, often starting the main meal of the day after school before my mother returned from work by peeling potatoes for her famous, buttery whipped potatoes that would accompany the meat protein, sometimes with gravy, plus a vegetable, applesauce, and buttered white bread if you were still hungry or wanted to mop up the gravy.
Breaded Pork Chops, Mashed Potatoes & Gravy, Sweet Corn and Applesauce
Mom’s recipes were learned at the side of her mother and at the age of 14 when she was a cook and housekeeper for a disabled woman and her young daughter where she learned and prepared some of their favorite recipes. Mom’s heritage was Dutch, yet the foods she prepared were often based on the poultry, meats, game and fish that were raised and butchered on the family farm, caught in Lake Michigan, or were the products of the hunt.
I hail from generations of food-preparers, farmers, hunters and fishermen, where food was always a part of every family gathering, recreational activity, and conversation. We grew it, caught it, killed it, butchered it, canned it, cooked it, served it, and yes, ate it! To read more about my family food heritage, see Good Morning.
The 1957 Racine Journal Times Cookbook was Mom’s go-to cookbook. It featured the recipes from the Sunday newspaper submitted by women home cooks highlighting the food from their ethnic heritage. Racine is a diverse city with a large mix of European and African American cultures by working-class people who emigrated to Racine to work in the factories. German, Italian, Danish, Czech, Polish, Irish, and African Americans settled in their respective neighborhoods, worshipped in their churches, and recreated in their neighborhood bars and restaurants.
1957 Racine Journal Times Cookbook
Growing up, whenever we welcomed a new neighbor, someone we knew died, were invited as guest to someone’s home for a meal, or to celebrate a holiday with friends and family, we’d bring a Danish Kringle which Racine is famous for. In my hometown of Madison, we have a bakery, Lane’s, where the bakers learned how to make Danish pastries at the sides of Racine’s bakers. I still bring a Kringle to potlucks, for work coffee breaks, or birthday celebrations.
Comfort Food Served with Memories
From Wikipedia: “Comfort food is food that provides a nostalgic or sentimental value to someone, and may be characterized by its high caloric nature, high carbohydrate level, or simple preparation. The nostalgia may be specific to an individual, or it may apply to a specific culture.”
On weekends, when Mom wasn’t working at her job, she often made soups, stews, pot roasts, her chili mac or goulash, breaded pork chops, meat loaf, scalloped potatoes with ham, American Chop Suey, stuffed cabbages, Sloppy Joes, and tuna fish salad, or salmon patties for our meatless Catholic Fridays, and my absolute all-time favorite, homemade egg dumpling noodles with chicken. I inherited the ceramic bread bowl that her sister Betty would use to make egg noodles. Mom’s mother, my grandma Holly, would often make her egg dumpling noodles, a take on German spaetzle, and serve with a beef roast, chicken, or goose from her brother’s farm. On weekends, Mom also would bake cookies and cakes, and make pies, my favorite, blueberry.
Thanksgiving Blueberry Pie 2021
Growing up, we never ate in Asian restaurants, yet some restaurants at the time made an Americanized version of Chop Suey, usually braised pork or beef with Chinese vegetables in a gravy served over rice and garnished with Chow Mein Noodles. It was my paternal grandmother, Violet’s favorite meal when we’d eat in mall department store restaurants. My mother’s recipe soon became a favorite of mine too.
American Chop Suey
When outlining this reminiscence, I decided to make Sloppy Joes yesterday served with Ruffled Potato Chips and Cherry Jell-O as inspiration. It worked. When I make childhood comfort foods I’m transported to the past, and though my mother died six years ago, she’s alive again when I cook. Childhood comfort foods are served with memories.
Sloppy Joes & Ruffle Potato Chips
Over the years, I’ve evolved into a more sophisticated home cook, experimenting with ethnic foods beyond my heritage. I use spices and techniques that I didn’t experience in my home at my mother’s side. I’ve attempted different weight-loss diets too over the years since I’ve struggled with my weight and my genetic predisposition to adult-onset diabetes. I’ve been on Weight Watchers, Atkins, Keto, and mostly recently the Mediterranean Diet. I’ve had intermittent success, yet I’ve never been able to maintain and sustain a diet. See The Skinny on Medicalized Obesity.
As a baby boomer, I still occasionally enjoy foods that new generations balk at, including Jell-O, canned corned beef hash with poached eggs, liver sausage sandwiches, and the most alarming to young people, Spam. I believe I have a genetic predisposition to eat Spam since it was the food my mother craved when she was pregnant with her six children. Oh, My!
Since my 92-year-old father lives alone and is not much of a cook himself, family members often bring him leftovers that he can easily warm up and enjoy. Usually, foods that Mom made. He always points out however, when we’ve seasoned it or added an ingredient different than hers, yet he appreciates the comfort and memories it provides.
Family holiday foods too are comforting. Thanksgiving dinners with turkey and ham, all our favorite sides and the post-dinner pie buffet. At Christmas our favorite cookies, for Easter as a child the Lamb Cake captured the attention of all the children at my paternal grandmother and great grandmother’s extended family dinner.
Easter Lamb Cake
As the seasons change, and holidays return, preparing and enjoying the comfort foods of my past conjure memories of loved ones no longer here in life. Comfort food nurtures — not only our bodies —but our emotions and well-being too.
I don’t believe there are ‘empty-calories’ in childhood comfort foods. They are filled with love and served with memories.
Related Reading from Mixed Metaphors, Oh My!
Comfort Food: Winter Blues, Holidays, & Weight Gain
The Skinny on Medicalized Obesity
The Comfort of Sourdough Pancakes
For me, it was scalped potatoes and ham, and salmon loaf with creamed peas!
Nettie, my mother made creamed peas with her salmon patties! Small world. My father still loves creamed peas. Me, not so much!
The Fall Equinox (Mabon in my belief) is my favorite time of the year as well. The Harvest Moon was in full glory last night! Yes, a special time of the year as you say. Love comfort foods…they just don’t love me back!