Comfort Food

A comfort food makes me feel good because it reminds me of my childhood, of my mother, of good times and good friends. It makes me feel protected.

Definition of Comfort Food

A food which makes me feel good because it reminds me of my childhood, of my mother, of good times and good friends. It makes me feel protected. It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

My favorite comfort food is pears. A raw pear is a delicacy to me and it gives me that warm fuzzy feeling. You will need to hear the story of my special pears to be able to appreciate what they mean to me. I hope that others of you will try to figure out why certain foods are comforting to you. Please share your stories in the discussion.

The Pear Story

It was summer 1947, Sunday morning. We lived in the small village of Bredelem near the former imperial city of Goslar where I was going to school. As we came home from church, the world around me appeared as through a milky glass. I felt woozy and thought that I was going to lose my balance as I came down the little hill from the church. I slinked away to bed without eating dinner and without talking to anyone. All my mother's alarm bells went off at the same time. She found me, looked at me, smelled a strange odor coming from my mouth and cried out to God for guidance. No medical help was available for miles around. My mother remembered neighbors whispering about a physician who quietly lived with his wife in one little room. He was rumored to have had his license revoked after the collapse of the Nazi regime. We all knew that it had nothing to do with incompetence. Under Hitler, most professional people were required to chose between joining the Nazi party or losing their licence, and he had chosen to join the party to be able to serve his patients. After the war, the Allies decided that it takes 6 years to become denazified (the German word is "entnazifiziert"), so for 6 years, all former Nazi physicians were farm laborers, rubble clearers, or welfare recipients while the German people looked after their health with almost no medical assistance. My mother knew that her 12-year-old daughter was dying, and she could have cared less about denazification or about people's gossip. She dragged me to the lonely old man who appeared afraid. When he realized that I had contacted the dreaded dyphtheria and would choke to death within hours, he threw caution to the wind. He had in his little black bag two large bright orange pills which he made me swallow immediately. That was no easy task. A thick crust had formed on my tonsils, blocking the throat. The pills had to be broken up to pass through the tiny opening. Within a short time, the crust around my tonsils broke off, and I spit out what looked like two walnut shells. My urine turned bright orange. I was able to breathe again.