Comfort food

I can always tell when I'm going through a tough time emotionally. Some people get angry; some get weepy; some indulge in too much chocolate; some drink too much alcohol...

I eat bread and milk.

It's something I don't really think about any other time - I never gave it to my sons when they were little and I went at least a couple of decades without having it myself. But in 2001 when I was watching my life crash down around my ears, I ate it a lot.

Soft white bread ripped up (not cut!) and put into a bowl then covered with milk and eaten with a big spoon in all its drippy, soggy glory.

Judging from the looks and comments I've gotten when I've mentioned it to other people, I guess it's not a common combination. Even my kids were repulsed. I can't think of it objectively any more than I can judge whether oxygen is the best breathable gas. It is neither bad nor good tasting to me - it is just comfort. It must go back to my childhood. Aunt Jessie (who was the most nurturing person in my life) would make it for me - not that it required much fixing.

I don't have a lot of fond culinary memories from my childhood. Food wasn't a big part of my life. A boring meat and potatoes diet may be partly (if not wholly) to blame for this. We ate boiled beef, boiled potatoes, boiled cauliflower and boiled cabbage...see a pattern??

Sundays were special. We always had fried chicken - dipped in raw egg, rolled in crackermeal and fried in Crisco. This would be accompanied by noodles in broth one week and Bisquick biscuits in gravy the next. I liked the biscuits best, especially when I could take some of the dough, roll it very thin and cut it with the "hole" part of our red and white plastic doughnut cutter. It was like little crackers after it was baked.

Vegetables were mainly canned corn or canned peas (with half and half added - I've no idea why). In summer we'd occasionally have corn on the cob or fresh radishes. We also had fresh cucumber, sliced paperthin and put in a bowl with vinegar, salt and a bit of sugar. Aunt Jessie would make pickled beets, which I still love, and there were always jars of store-bought pickles, which I like no better now than I did then. I never remember seeing any brocolli, zucchini, asparagus or any other fresh or frozen veggies.

I already mentioned the poor, smelly boiled-out cauliflower and cabbage. Now that I'm an adult, I love cruciferous veggies. I can make a meal out of brussel sprouts, love raw cauliflower and think cabbage is delightful in nearly all of its forms. But it took me a while to get to the point of even trying any of them. That odor wasn't an easy thing to forget.

I was considered a finicky eater as a child. I rarely got stomach aches but, when I did, they freaked me out so much that I tried to avoid them by eating as "safe" as possible. Although, that may not be quite the reason since, once I had the opportunity, I enjoyed such "exotic" fare as Taco Bell burritos, canned Chun King chow mein and spaghetti sauce made "from scratch" using McCormicks little foil packets. We lived in a very small town on the west coast of Florida. There weren't even any cities nearby...so it wasn't easy expanding my culinary outlook. When I moved to California (at age 20), I had my first avocado. And bagel. And egg roll. And I loved them all.

Now that I'm an adult, I'm pretty adventurous in my food choices. My favorite food is Dim Sum. I love Persian, Ethiopian, Greek, Vietnamese, Thai and Cajun cuisines. And, of course, Mexican and Italian food - which is now nearly as mainstream American and burgers and hot dogs. In spite of the fact that I've never warmed that much to sushi, I ate everything offered to me while I was in Japan. This included raw fish, raw octopus and raw squid...and (at a Korean restaurant) even raw liver! I didn't get sick once.

But in spite of living in a culinary nirvanha like Los Angeles where there are literally thousands of funky little ethnic restaurants to choose from, when the chips (and my emotions) are down, I end up eating the whitest food imaginable: white bread and white milk...served in a white bowl.

Would that be getting back to my white-food roots?