Comfort

"The first thing we taste is milk from our mother's breast, accompanied by love and affection, stroking, a sense of security, warmth, and well-being, our first intense feelings of pleasure. Later on she will feed us solid food from her hands, or even chew food first and press it into our mouths, partially digested. Such powerful associations do not fade easily, if at all. We say "food" as if it were a simple thing, an absolute like rock or rain to take for granted. But it is a big source of pleasure in most lives, a complex realm of satisfaction both physiological and emotional, much of which involves memories of childhood." from A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman, page 129.

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I close my eyes and try to imagine the most comforting thing possible. I’m standing in my kitchen, adjusting to the cool tile under my bare feet as the thick heat of an early summer afternoon sizzles outside. It’s that perfect time of day when the sun hits my kitchen window and shines through the red and orange curtain I have hanging there, creating a rosy glow around me. Comfort, comfort, comfort, I think, rubbing the tension from my neck and shoulders and willing all of the world’s craziness to melt away.

A warm bubble bath, I think, irritated immediately since my apartment only has a stall shower to offer.

The caress of a lover. No lover tonight.

A hot cup of tea, a long massage, a satisfying meal. Then the answer comes to me so clearly that I’m surprised I didn’t think of it right away. I double check to make sure that I have all the necessary ingredients to make this delicacy I have thought of, very high on my list of "Most Comforting Things Ever"and one that will definitely do the trick of comforting me tonight: Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Of the many cookbooks I own, I choose for this endeavor a cookbook gifted to me by a friend many years ago, entitled Bitchin’ in the Kitchen: The PMS Survival Cookbook by Jennifer Evans and Fritzi Horstman. I find the title fitting for my current mood. I am not–at this time of the month–"surviving PMS," but I am bitchin’ in my kitchen, completely thrown and jarred after a day of realizing life’s small cruelties. Comfort, comfort, comfort, I think again, flipping to the recipe for "Double Trouble Chocolate Chip Cookies: When no amount of chocolate is too much." I appreciate the humor at the end of the recipe, the instructions telling me to combine all ingredients, scoop the dough into golf ball-sized balls and eat as is. "Alternative: You can also bake the cookies." Although I do anticipate many tastes of the raw cookie dough, I crave the smell of cookies baking in the oven: as much of a pleasure as actually eating them.

I start by combining 1 and 3/4 cups flour with 1/4 teaspoon baking soda. In a separate bowl, I combine 1 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, ½ cup brown sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. As I cream these ingredients together, I let my mind wander and think about what has led to this quest for comfort. I think about you telling me that your new girlfriend is not only gorgeous, but a belly dancer to boot. On the list of things I TOTALLY could have gone without knowing... I think, shaking my head and cracking a large egg into the batter, with perhaps a little too much force. I combine 1/3 cup unsweetened powdered cocoa with 2 tablespoons milk, and add this to my butter and sugar mixture. As I slowly begin to add my flour to the bowl, I push this last thought out of my mind and turn my thoughts toward other things that life has thrown at me recently.

Like the realization of the volatility of relationships, for example, and how people come and go, in and out of your life as time passes. I consider how many times I’ve let myself think that I have found a forever friend, until something happens to remind me that this is a delusion and that nothing is permanent. As I finish my cookie recipe by adding what can only be described as a SHIT TON of chocolate chips, I consider the conditional nature of compassion and forgiveness. And with every dollop of cookie dough that I place on my baking sheet, I wonder if it’s really true that everyone will disappoint you eventually, if you know them long enough.

(I suddenly start to wonder if these Double Trouble Chocolate Chip Cookies will be affected by my mood. Will their structure change as a result of absorbing my sadness and anger, like the water crystals studied by Masaru Emoto? If I continue to brood over them, will they burn? Or, like the food cooked by Tita in Like Water for Chocolate, will the people I share my cookies with experience what I felt while baking them?)

The aroma of the chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven begins to permeate the air around me, and the smell is enough to lull me into thinking---at least for a moment---that the troubles outside my door no longer exist. Suddenly, I’m no longer rehashing arguments in my head or worrying about the future. Instead, I am transported to the past, to a time when things were simpler, when the most difficult task at hand was to stand eye-level with the kitchen counter and heed an adult’s warning to wait for those cookies to cool on their wire racks. This time, I’m the adult and I don’t wait. And in fact my cookies are not burnt, they are chewy and gooey and chocolaty and delicious. I crawl into bed with a book, my still hot chocolate chip cookies and a glass of cold milk, and I feel instantly at ease and also amazed by the power of comfort foods. If only for a short while, I’m a kid again: I feel safe and happy and warm and comforted.

Mission accomplished.