Comfort Food.

When I reached a certain age, I became aware that life is a challenging enterprise. Each day usually holds wonder and delight, but at some times it is impossible to deny, that there are some long, hard rows to hoe. Those are the days that call out for comfort food.


There are the standard solutions, macaroni and cheese, homemade baked beans, fresh baked bread lavished with butter,a warm mug of Ovaltine, sweet buns or maybe a bowl of cornflakes, peas in the pod, fresh, red , ripe, sweet cherries or mashed potatoes with a mother's familiar gravy.


Then there are the individual likings. A university friend, who was prone the vagaries of less than perfect days, used to come home from class, every so often, with a large container of chocolate ice cream and a quart of whole milk. He put the ice cream in the blender, with as much milk as it would hold and blended. This creation was glupped into a mixing bowl. He would lie on the couch, with the bowl on his belly, as his fine mind absorbed some inane afternoon Transylvanian soap opera. With a slow rhythm, a big spoon moved from bowl to mouth, bowl to mouth until the bowl was empty. He set the bowl on the floor and then lay back and seemed to enjoy his experience of what he called "a bloater".


The other day I found myself, in my new car, headed to town to buy cottage cheese and Welch's grape jelly. Back home, the cottage cheese was spooned into a breakfast bowl with more than a little bit of jelly on top.The cottage cheese and jelly were gently mixed until they reached a balanced blend while the integrity of the jelly remained visible. It seemed I needed this odd combination of foods, I hadn't had since childhood. 


My family, on my father's side, was crowded with great aunts. Some of them were "unclaimed treasures". When any of their sisters were in need of family, they were available to bring their kind ways and wholesome cooking anywhere; a mining town in the North, the big city, or a farm up atop Hamilton Mountain; but they never made it to Korea, to help out one sister who probably needed them most, when she set off with her children and her husband, a Presbyterian minister, to help build schools, hospitals and perhaps to save a soul or two.


Addie and Vi were the favourites. Whatever the situation, the family knew they knew just what had to be done. With the respect they earned, they also gained the power to define right from wrong. The only time I heard of them hesitating was when they won a cart full of groceries, at some celebration at a local store. They had to be sure this wasn't some sort of gambling before they accepted the bounty.


Well, it was from Addie and Vi, I received my first bowl of cottage cheese and grape jelly. The cottage cheese was made from the raw milk the "boys" brought to town with them from the family dairy farm. The process involved cheese cloth and resulted in what they called crowdie . The jelly was made from the Concord grapes that grew in their back garden. That cereal bowl held all that was good with this world.


The other day this big, old  world seemed a little tired. I just couldn't solve my own problems, let alone deal with the news trying to fill my thoughts every hour on the hour. 


When I finished my long ago treat, things didn't seem nearly so bad. Cottage cheese and grape jelly seemed to let me put things in perspective.  Maybe Addie and Vi arranged to have some of the comfort and love from their time, before the constant chatter of the radio, a time when all could seem well with the world, come into my kitchen for a spell.