Comfort Food

I came home after working at conference all day Saturday.  Allan was out fetching David from a birthday party but my heart did a little dance when I saw several cooking magazines open on the kitchen counter and some prep work underway.  I knew a delicious dinner was in the works.  Within an hour or so Allan and his trusty sous chef Lindsay had an amazing dinner, of all new recipes, of chicken and dumplings on the table followed by a Jamie Oliver dessert called Hip Pudding which was a berry-full cake-y dessert in individual ramekins....SO yummy!

I was so tired and so hungry and that no doubt added to my enjoyment of the meal - not to mention I did not have to lift a finger in the making thereof!  It was a wonderful way to be loved.

Last night was more simple fare of spaghetti with meat sauce which is not my favourite meal but again, after a long trek to North Vancouver and back, 90 minutes standing in the pouring rain watching rugby and dashing off to vote, I was famished and the food was wholesome and delicious (as usual for Allan the sauce was made from scratch and it was so good).  He also made two other meals, one for the freezer and one for later this week!!  How lucky am I that he is such a great cook and comfort food provider!!

So it may not have been top of my list of my personal comfort food but it was food and it comforted my belly for sure!

 Tonight Allan is off to University for class and I am solo for Soup Group..... I picked out the recipe on Sunday and did the shopping for it and Allan helped me prep a bit last night but its up to me to get 'er done tonight.  I am not confident enough to wing it yet so I am following a reccipe for Cream of Broccoli soup and hoping it brings some degree of comfort to those busy young families who will share it tonight! (It smells good so far - fingers crossed)

I am teaching a class on Wednesday night on culture and mulit-culturalism and I love the way food is so  central to culture. Most cultures use food to comfort not only themselves but others too.  I remember when my Grandma died, I flew to Ottawa with my parents and drove out to the Ottawa Valley (Pembroke Ont) where she had been living close to my Aunt.  It's a semi-rural area with lots of farms and every time we came back from the funeral home or the church or wherever , there were packages of food in baskets on the front porch.  So many people brought food as comfort and as a help to my Aunt who suddenly had a house full of relatives and was grieving too.  It was delightful to unwrap each package and put it on the table and know it was cooked with love and was a tangible expression of comfort.  We did not have to cook or shop for the whole week we were there.

When Lindsay was born our church brought us dinner everyday for 2 weeks - it was truly amazing and to this day it makes my heart joyful to remember the care and comfort it brought us.  I have made lots of meals for new families and it gives me such joy to do so (plus you often get a cuddle with a newborn - what could be better than that!!).

I will be making a meal on Friday for friends who have suffered a loss and I hope they will find not only physical comfort from a meal but also some emotional comfort from a meal made for them with love and care.

Sometimes food is just fuel for our busy bodies but sometimes it is much, much more.