On The Importance Of Comfort Food

We all have them.  There are certain foods that for some reason have the power to make us feel good or at least feel better than we did before making and eating them.  If you sat down and made a list - what are your favorite foods - those are your comfort foods.  Generally, they are the foods we grew up with, the ones that remind us of family or home, of happy or special times.  Now imagine you could never eat your favorite food - your ultimate comfort food(s) - never ever again.  How sad would you be?  How often would you crave the now off limits food?  And how good would it feel to then finally get to have that food again?  Can you not feel your muscles relax and your stress melt away just imagining that moment?

If you are lucky, your comfort foods are something healthy and inexpensive.  But I would imagine that most of us have potentially unhealthy but relatively inexpensive comfort foods like mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and other basics from childhood.  If you are anything like me, the cupboard is kept stocked with all we need to make those foods.

So why bring it up?  Who cares, Corrine?  Well, me, and it's my blog, so I can write about comfort food if I want.

It occurred to me tonight how important my comfort foods are to me.  I've been so stressed...so, so, so stressed.  Tonight I made tomato soup and grilled cheese for dinner (supper, whatever).  As I started eating I noticed that I really was starting to feel more relaxed.  I'm craving pizza and macaroni and cheese and really, those mashed potatoes don't sound too bad either.  Obviously, it would likely not be wise to eat those all in the same day or to eat like that all the time, but when the stress is excessive and the craving overwhelming, good heavens, just go ahead and eat those things that actually do take the edge off.  There are so many worse options.  If a bit of mac n' cheese can give me a few moments of feeling not-as-stressed, I'm going to eat some mac n' cheese...well...fake cheese, and expensive, organic pasta, fake milk...okay, not "real" mac n' cheese and that makes me sad, but I'll take what I can get.  And a few extra moments of even a little more relaxed is worth a few more calories than are recommended, I think.  I'll eat healthier when I'm less stressed...if I'm lucky, that will be sooner versus later.