Comfort food

We each have or own opinion of exactly what to consider as a comfort food. Roast beef, pot roast, cookies, ice cream, chocolate, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, chitlins, or good old chicken soup, to each their own. When we feel down and out there is nothing quite like the taste of something familiar to cheer us up is there? Although I have a difficult time relating to the guy that absolutely loves to cut a lemon in half and suck out the juice. He says it makes him whole again. No, that's not my thing. I like sandwiches.

To be truthful about it, there are not that many times when I really need a comfort food. Life usually keeps rolling along for me, a few ups and downs from time to time but as long as I wake up in the morning I figure I've got another chance at the age old past time of pursuing happiness and that's truly a gift. There was an event about 4 months ago that sort of disrupted my ordinarily cheerful mood. A guy walked into my office and dropped a comment that literally knocked me off my feet. Something the two of us had set into motion almost 20 years ago for our mutual benefit had been squandered away and was no longer an option, period. Boy! Did I need a sandwich after that little meeting.

There are the store bought sandwiches that cover the spectrum from 200 to 4000 calories. From the cheap $1 burger to the 2 pound $15 variety or the chicken sandwich made completely without bread. Those weren't for me. I needed the genuine home made, calorie unknown, built from scratch, taste beyond belief sandwich for this moment in my life. After my trip to the store for proper ingredients, to the strains of comfortable and familiar music, I stood at the kitchen counter and slowly created my Dagwood style masterpiece. Whole wheat bread, corned beef, Swiss cheese, a half inch thick slice of onion, horseradish, a bit of real mayonnaise, paper thin slices of dill pickle and just a hint of mustard. It finished out at about 4 inches thick. Then I squashed it a little so as to fit in my mouth. (Hey! It's my sandwich, nobody is there to offend, so I'm allowed to do that) Took a bite and started to feel better. Now, that's what comfort food is all about. I say, "Go for it!"

No, it didn't solve my problem. No, I didn't finish it all in one sitting. In the scope of all things both real and imagined that sandwich had no lasting affect except one: Doing something for myself reaffirmed in my own mind that I was still important and worth the effort. I'm totally comfortable with that. Comfort food, there's nothing quite like it......................Joe