Mac n' Cheese

I gotta be honest. My daughter was the one who helped me realize I was missing the most obvious draw for you. Meals...food...everyone is about food. You have your organic, your comfort, your haute cuisine, your fast, your nuclear -- is that what they call that new food that is all about chemistry and using dry ice or hot torches?

Anyway...so let me tell you about me and food. I love it. Almost any kind.

From a generation forced to eat liver and onions once a week because we supposedly needed the iron, who grew up thinking Chinese Food was called Chung King and came in a can, taught to cut iceberg lettuce with a knife to get our greens and ...well...also used Aqua Net to keep our hair that had been rinsed in beer in place, food has acquired and developed a deeply meaningful place in my life.

Add to that a lifetime of dieting that began when I was put on my first 800 hundred calorie 'Calories Don't Count' diet in the fifth grade --- they're called boobs Mom, not fat-- and dieted my way up to a goodly poundage, and we're talking complicated relationship...me n' food that is.

But now I have this really healthy attitude towards food and great appreciation for the show 'Chopped'. I've read everything I could about food, come from the geography of the Anti Inflammation Diet and fresh roasted coffee and fair trade chocolate.

As to Mac n' Cheese...well...Five Cheese Wisconsin is my favorite recipe. I discovered it when I was planning Northwest Cooking Camp for some young friends. When you take a bite, the strands of cheese just  sort of float towards you like a good taffy pull and the butter drips off the strands back towards your plate.

I'm here to say there is absolutely nothing wrong with comfort food. It serves it's purpose.

My first comfort food was Sugar Pops; gigantic bowls of Sugar Pops consumed during the few minutes I was home alone after school before my brothers arrived from school and Mom returned from work. They accompanied the watching of a show called Merv Griffin and if I was lucky dribbled, literally, into the afternoon movie.  Or maybe it was the other way around. I was hoping to go into the entertainment industry at the time so I was more invested in the guests Merv had and trying to watch all the Shirley Temple movies in which Arthur Treacher, his side kick , had appeared.

It was only when comfort moved into the category of self medicating that I got into troubled waters. Well..water would have been an improvement.

But I'm here to say, you CAN sort out that which you are using to self medicate and back yourself down to the level of comforting.

Comforting pain is giving yourself a good pep talk everything is going to be OK.  Medicating is saying, "I can't feel this pain because it is unbearable'.

You can bear anything. It takes companionship, a willingness to be human, stamping your foot or whatever it is you do to stay grounded and a look to the future as a bright possibility.

Mac n' cheese, in the right quantities, is not only a lovely indulgence, but can build your calcium level in good ways. Sugar Pops...that's called dessert.  That's a treat, not a way of life.

The ingredients of your life count. Take note. Go for comfort. Keep dessert for special occasions of celebration or infrequent moments of ' Happy Mouth'.

Well...at least that's what's workin' for me.
Love,
Deborah