All. The. Time.

But it won't actually happen.

Connie, the next time my mom makes my grandma's fudge, I'll have to sned some to you. It is quintessential grandma fudge. My mom is not the world's greatest cook, but her fudge fuckin' rocks.

Fudge . . .

I will avoid restarting the holy war of nuts vs. no nuts.

My mother grew up during the Depression, too, and learned the myriad ways of hamburger. Unfortunately, that included that king of DisComfort food, slumgullion (however it's spelled). Hamburger, macaroni, a can of stewed tomatoes. That's it. Mother was not a devotee of the spice rack, all things considered. I cannot bear stewed tomatoes. Well, honestly, I can't stand tomatoes close to their natural state in any case.

Also in the DisComfort food, ham bone and beans. I don't know why, I love ham, and beans are pretty neutral to me, but something about the way it smelled just turned my stomach.

Still, I have the last laugh, because I was always teased for meticulously slicing off all bits of visible fat from my pork chops.

April 2, 2001

We sat on the steps letting the mosquitoes bite us. Our friend was dead. The coroner was on his way; we weren’t to touch anything. It was too soon to reminisce about his life or rage at his death. We all sat silently, shocked.

I did what I always do when there’s a crisis. I made tea – hot and sweet. I don’t know if anyone drank it, but we all clutched our cups as we stared into space and didn’t speak.

It’s not exactly food, it’s not exactly comfort, but a hot cup of tea can be just the thing.

-t, you've inspired me. Mine is a little long, but since noone's counting...

The Way the French Do It

“Let me show you how the French slice it.” My grandfather takes my fork and knife out of my 5-year-old hands and slices into the fried, egg-soaked bread that’s covered butter and syrup. Four times from top to bottom. He turns the plate and cuts again. Twenty-five perfect, bite sized pieces. When he finished, there was a piece on the fork. He popped the fork into his mouth as I laughed. "That one got stuck."

The morning after he died, I had French toast. Four times from top to bottom. Turn the plate. Four times again. The last piece stuck. I set it to the side, and ate the rest, leaving the first piece for grampa.

That's wonderful, Aimee. I'm enormously pleased to be associated with it in a small way.

Aw, jeez, Aimée, that's beautiful. But it got my allergies going something fierce.

Salt

I know there are people who attach certain foods to certain reactions. But I don't eat for comfort; comfort is about words, and touch. I eat for love, or to stay alive, or to revel in the sensory. Comfort, when needed, takes a different route.

Nearest thing is salt. I wake from nightmare, touch the tip of my tongue, featherlight, to the back of his neck, and taste sweat there as he sleeps. That bit of bitterness keeps me from drifting into my omnipresent terror that the man who slept in my heart before him took no comfort in me.

Crap, nearly missed this:

As I'm getting closer to completion, I keep feeling like everything is completely wrong, and when my editor gets it, he'll make me give the money back because it's ALL WRONG.

Does this happen to anyone else?

Considering I wrote the last 65K words of Cruel Sister while literally chanting "please don't let this SUCK" as a mantra under my breath? Because it made me stop working on the Kinkaids and I had no heart or attention left to put into it?

That would be, yes.

But it didn't suck. Neither does yours.

The smell is sweaty. It's onions and fat and chile. It's the burnt smell of flour and lard and a touch of salt, perhaps deposited in kneading the flour masa. Scalded iron skillet. It's hominy and tripe and pork fat. It's corn and lime and a sharp scolding in spanglish for picking at the sweet tamale filling of pecan and raisin and cinammon. It's the sweet of biscochos in the oven, anise, that I count on every year. It's the next door neighbor's kitchen, and it's never been home to a gringa whose parents can't make a decent tortilla, until now. And I miss that like I don't miss my mom's hotdish.

Oh, that's really nice, sarameg. I can really picture it. And yours is striking, deb. Good stuff.