Comfort food. That's a pretty common expression that you hear people use to describe a food that makes them feel better. It might evoke memories of a time when you were sick and your mother would make you something special to cheer you up, or it might just be a favourite food.
But whatever the reason, comfort food makes you feel good. It's the food you eat when you're depressed, when you need a boost, or just for the sake of feeling good. There's just something about it that eases whatever troubles you might be experiencing.
I've never really had a comfort food; I don't know why, but it's just not something that's ever eased my emotional state. I'm definitely not one of those men whose heart can be won via my stomach. Maybe it's because I'm the one who does most of the cooking in our house, and I appreciate someone doing the dishes more than any food that's made for me.
On the other hand it could also be because I have no warm fuzzy feelings about childhood, and nothing is going to evoke nurturing for me. When you have no memories of genuine nurturing, it's going to damn hard to be reminded of them. Not surprising considering what I lived through as a child, and how I dealt with it for the next 20 years; running away, aided and abetted by any substance that would alter my reality, that instead of searching for comfort in nurturing, I search for comfort in leaving things behind, in escaping.
Food is pretty here and now, and doesn't allow for much escapism, so I've looked to a different media to foster my comfort. Most of my life it's been books. There have been periods where I've stopped reading because I haven't be able to find an author to fulfill that criterion.
Fortunately for my peace of mind, most of my life has coincided with the emergence of the fantasy genre as a major player in the publishing world. Talk about the perfect escapist reading. Magic, dragons, different worlds, evil wizards, and all those attributes that go into making a fantasy novel are just the ticket for my comfort food of the mind.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
I think the thing about "comfort food" reading is that it has to transport you entirely to another world. When I was a child it was English pony club-style books (as far from Australian suburbia as I could imagine - and the sort of active childhood I would only dream of); now my similar reading (and you might like to try them) is Jean Auel's "Earth's Children" series, set in Ice Age Europe during the encounter between "Cro-Magnon Man" and the Neanderthals.
The research is excellent, the writing is dreadful (you'd really love to take an editor's red pen to it), but the story - of a single orphan human girl taken in by Neanderthals, who single-handedly discovers virtually every human advance short of the forging of metals (the domestication of animals, the travois, the needle, making fire with flint ...) is just totally engrossing.
2 - Justene
One of my 14-year-olds is going to read Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave-Bear, the first in that series "next". I am practically pacing while I wait for her to finish her current book.