Comfort Food

The Rubies

Nana's girls

The whole time I was growing up, all of my 24 cousins gathered at my Opa and Nana's house every Sunday night. As a youth, I absolutely depended on those gatherings to ground me and make me feel that the world was as it should be. A big part of the comfort factor was the food. I knew for a fact that there would be Aunt Marla's lemon dessert and Nana's chocolate chip cookies waiting for me. I knew the cousins would watch Silver Spoons and Punky Brewster and the grown-ups would gather in the pristine, white living room to catch up.

I was reminded of Nana's chocolate chip cookies this week when Marlene told me that she is careful to make cookie dough whenever Jakey comes to her house. I love that she does that, because I know how disappointed he would be if he opened the fridge and Grandma's cookie dough wasn't there. To this day, I remember one Sunday when Nana bought cookies at Albertson's and put them in the special ZCMI shirtbox she usually put her homemade ones in, nestled between the cool sheets of waxed paper. I remember tears stinging my eyes and feeling unreasonably betrayed and devastated.

I don't know why it was so imperative that the cookies and the lemon dessert always be the same. I felt that way about my mom's bran muffins and homemade bread and my grandma Golda's roast beef and toasted cheese, my grandpa Bill's Election Day chili and the Dutch food Nana made for Opa. I was even comforted by Slurpees the summer my grandfather died. He died on Memorial Day, and we were all a little bit lost that summer. Almost every night, my Aunt Tricia drove my grandpa's four grandchildren to 7-11 for a Slurpee, which we'd take to the cemetery. It sounds strange, but it gave us a new routine to cling to in the face of change and loss.
Away from home in college, I'd find myself buying buttermilk for the bran muffins or calling home to get the recipe for Mom's heavy, whole wheat bread. I never missed an election day without chopping the onions and celery for Bill's chili. When my brother left for a mission in Brazil, my dad inexplicably packed over 24 grilled ham and cheese sandwiches for him to take on the plane. He sliced the cheese, grilled each one and carefully wrapped them individually in napkins and tin foil. I guess he was thinking that those sandwiches would bridge the gap between the continents and the two years Traj would be gone. Many people on the flight to Brazil enjoyed one of my dad's sandwiches. Jack Spratt bread, cheddar cheese, a thick slab of ham, a little Heinz chili sauce...

Food connects us to each other and creates memories that nothing else can. This summer, the kids and I and Coco have taken a couple of pies to Nana's house to sweeten our visits. Every day, somebody asks hopefully if we can get a pie and go to Nana's house. Of course we can! How easy is it to hop in the car, stop by Marie Callendar's and spend an hour at Nana's house. When the storms roll in and the leaves fall and the kids go back to school, I hope they'll feel as comforted by their memories of summer pie as I do by my memories of Nana's chocolate chip cookies.