COMFORT FOOD

You could be a star, a celeb, a business tycoon or whatever but when it comes to comfort food it is probably the simplest of things that you would want to be served, indulge in with closed eyes remembering your childhood, actually the food that you grew up with. Especially, when depression, melancholy or ill-health strikes you, all you need is that small portion of your favourite comfort food, which could be khichuri(khichdi), jam bread, chicken stew or icecream or even the roadside food like egg roll or alur chop and yes, also that two-minute wonder food, maggi. 

Just read, Mahanayika Suchitra Sen wants to have phuchka (paani puri). She is very ill, 82 years old, in severe respiratory distress, is hardly eating anything but when Mamata Banerjee asked her , she said, she would like to have a few phuchkas. See !! Comfort food really blunts all kinds of negative feelings. Elevates the mood as well as our physiology. Do not forget this is the food that your mother made when you felt litle down , had fever or loss of appetite. 

I think, we develop this craving for 'comfort' food mostly while going through a rough phase in our life. Perhaps,  this takes us back to those times when we would throw tantrums, driving our parents nuts, refusing the vegetables or the fish that we hated to debone. Eventually, the frustrated but caring mother would get us the food we would eat without uttering a word and feel happy that the child is not hungry anymore and later eat her food aram se ..

 

This habit stays with us till the last day of our life and we seek comfort and security, which our mother used to provide us during challenging times in our childhood, even when we are on the verge of hitting the twilight of our life . 

A bowl of vegetable curry or the healthy soup might have been replaced with the bigger problems of life, with the various complexities but the comfort zone that we still search for is the love and care that manifests itself through the comfort food.

 Mine is very clearly deem, alu sheddho, bhaat with ghee or butter (boiled eggs and mashed potatoes with rice and ghee/butter). What is your comfort food and why ?


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