I say comfort food is meatloaf, pot roast, cobblers, spaghetti and meatballs, banana bread. Comfort food is what Mom--or more likely Grandma--made back in the day when she had neither a microwave nor a job. She did probably have a frugal budget, and quite a few hours to spend in the kitchen every day making braises and roasts, peeling apples and puttering around with pie crusts.
Junk food is processed and convenient. Pop Tarts and Ding-Dongs, chips and dips and Slim Jims are all junk food. Junk food is mostly a post-World War II, post-feminism phenomenon. I'm sure my dad could dredge up memories of a few "junk foods" that were around in his childhood, but not the tiniest fraction of a percent of what inundates us at every gas station convenience store today.
My own childhood comfort foods were made mostly by my dad. He still makes the best spaghetti and meatballs in the world, and his veal cutlets are to die for. My mom used to make a simple tuna sandwich that I loved, and sometimes for breakfast she'd make a hot cereal out of rice and raisins.
But I grew up in the seventies and eighties, and my mother couldn't be bothered to cook much. She bought canned or frozen vegetables and powdered mashed potatoes. There was no fresh milk in the house throughout my entire childhood. My parents bought powdered nonfat milk and mixed it up with water. It was gross. My mom made a horrible meatloaf and greasy, flaccid chicken cacciatore.
Aside from the accompanying emotional trauma, the best thing to happen to me was my parents' divorce, at least culinarily speaking. My mom let me do the shopping (fresh milk! bagels and cream cheese!) and my dad started cooking more than ever. (My mom quickly gave up cooking for good, handing over the responsibility to me, at my request, when I was fifteen.) My dad sent lunches to school with me and my sister. They were fabulous. Usually leftovers from dinner, a nice thick slab of sourdough bread and butter, a thermos of his famous iced tea, a little belgian chocolate bar he bought at Trader Joe's, an orange from Grand Central Market, with a slit of rind removed to help us peel it.
But back to comfort food. Every culture has its own favorites, but I think comfort food, to merit the name, must be homemade. A perfect example of something teetering in the balance is macaroni and cheese. Did your mom make it from scratch? Or was it Kraft? If it was Kraft, did she tart it up with extra cheese or onion powder or breadcrumbs or anything? Hmm. Tricky. I recognize the essential comforting nature of Kraft macaroni and cheese, but I hesitate to honor it as true comfort food.
All kids today watch the same TV shows, eat the same fast food, play the same video games. In my generation most kids ate Kraft mac and cheese, but maybe each mom made it a little bit differently. The kids of today may very well remember the Costco pumpkin pie their parents bought at Thanksgiving, and it will all be exactly the same.
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