Comfort Food

 

 Do you have a comfort food? I associate food with survival. Survival of the fittest to see which one of us five girls could grab the biggest potato, or the least burnt fish stick.

 There are certain foods I associate with each family member. When I walk into a bakery I immediately think of my grandmother.

 My grandmother lived across the street, so running away from home was always something I tried to get away with. Occasionally, I was allowed to spend the night, although being 'allowed' defeated the purpose of the walkout.

 Grandma liked to bake Swedish delights. Ja. Her kitchen smelled like flour. Spritz cookies, raspberry tarts, strawberry crepes...

 Yeah. I didn't get any of that. She baked those for her co-workers. 

  I got cream of wheat, with a pat of butter plopped in the middle and sprinkled with sugar. 

 When I became an adult and was feeling homesick one day, I bought a box of cream of wheat and tried to bring back that feeling of safeness. My futile attempt produced a bowl with lumps of beige, glutinous blobs, topped with sugared bits of butter. 

  I learned Grandma can't be reached with a bowl of gruel.

 Our mother cooked dinner because she had to. It was clearly a huge imposition. We ate hockey puck hamburgers and pinkish pork. When she made chicken soup she just threw a whole chicken in a pot and whatever vegetables were at hand. It was not terrible, and we became experts in detecting gristle and bones.

 Mom did like old movies. In order for me to be able to spend alone time with her I would soldier crawl with a pillow into the living room and sit two inches away from the television screen. During an intermission where a man asked if you knew where your kids were, I'd head to the kitchen to make popcorn (the old school way) then grab two glass bottles of ice cold colas from the back porch. We would laugh over Danny Kaye pratfalls, or Cary Grant chasing leopards.

On Friday nights mom and all five girls tumbled into the rust bucket, a.k.a. the car (no seatbelts or car seats) and headed into Chicago where my maternal grandparents lived. We entered the "sauna" where we all dripped. Grandma liked the thermostat set at 180. Grandma didn't cook, so we usually ordered Chinese food. Grandpa would heat up stewed prunes and make tapioca for dessert. To get out of the sweltering apartment we stomped down the wooden back stairs and played tag in the alley until Grandma furiously waved a dishtowel signaling us to come back inside.

 On the drive home we stopped at Superdawg for a hotdog with mustard (no ketchup!) and played with trinkets of little plastic hotdogs we eventually lost as they fell through the rusted hole in the floor of the car.

 During the school week we were responsible for making our own lunch. Stale chips, moldy bread and peanut butter, unless it was Tuesday. Dad had Tuesdays off. Then we had Dagwood sandwiches. Wonder bread slathered with a pound of butter and slices of olive loaf or liverwurst. School was rough, especially on Tuesdays.

My mom ate weird foods like sardines with crackers, pickled pigs feet, and steak tartare. I swear she chose these weird foods so that she didn't have to share. 

We preferred Dad's choice of snacks - giant bowls of ice cream, fudge striped cookies and taffy. On New Year's Eve, at midnight we celebrated with the traditional forkful of herring. Somehow I was the only offspring who stayed up with him to ring in the new year with fish.

Trying to recreate these dishes just makes my heart hurt. 

Yet, I think I'd like to go back to one certain wintry day when my sisters and I sat and watched the snow fall as we ate grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. 

That was a good day.