Comfort Food

Whether comfort food is a guilty pleasure or a delectable treat that soothes the soul, I’m guessing we all have at least one. I have several!

American Romance editor Johanna Raisanen (remember her guest blog on April 13?) and I recently had a conversation about comfort food. She told me about her mother’s Christmas gingerbread cookies (my mouth is watering already) and her pulla—a Finnish sweet bread flavored with cardamom—and how delicious it was, especially “slathered with butter, right out of the oven.”

My grandmother used to make that bread as well! I don’t remember her using the Finnish name for it, but I do remember it warm from the oven. Oh, my.

That conversation with Johanna got me thinking about comfort food, and I realized that mine are all associated with my Finnish grandmother, who passed away in 1982 but lives forever in my heart. She was an amazing cook, and everyone in my family still raves about her breads and pastries.

She also made rice pies called piirakka, and although I haven’t had them in years, they are still one of my comfort foods. Piirakka are oval-shaped pies made from unleavened rye dough and filled with rice that has been cooked in milk, so its nice and creamy. I wish I knew how to make them, but my grandmother never used a cookbook and none of her recipes were ever written down.

My two other comfort foods are peanut butter cookies and butter tarts. Not specifically Finnish, but my grandmother made them all the time. She rolled peanut butter cookie dough into little balls and flattened them with the tines of a fork, so the tops had a crisscross pattern. To this day, a peanut butter cookie just doesn’t seem right if it hasn’t been flattened with a fork.

As for those butter tarts, what can I say? Still slightly warm from the oven, sweet and gooey with melt-in-your-mouth pastry . . . I can taste one now!

Wikipedia describes comfort food as “any food or drink to which one habitually turns for temporary respite, security, or special reward.” Accurate, but kind of cold sounding, don’t you think?

My comfort foods literally transport me back in time. My grandmother baked every day, and her kitchen was always filled with sweet, wonderful scents, not to mention a ton of love and laughter. A butter tart will take me there, every time.

What are your comfort foods? Do you associate them with someone or someplace special? I'd love to hear about them!

Lee
www.leemckenzie.com

PS: For more about my grandmother, please check out my SuperHeroine article at WetNoodlePosse.com.