potluck 2: comfort food

Oh dear patient friends, I apologise for the delay in getting this carnival up. But I promise, though it is small and slightly delayed, that it is still a good read. This time the theme was comfort food, and all of these posts are about comfort food! Delicious, comforting food.

If you are one of my usual vegan readers, please note that not all posts linked to today are vegan, but they don't really talk about food specifics and you should read the posts anyway, because they are important and amazing and good.


Oddcellist talks about comfort food:

When I talk about the things I can cook, I tend not to talk about Chinese food—because I don't cook the way my mother does, even though I hear her voice every time I cook (fry the ginger until its flavor blooms, use day-old rice to make fried rice, people here like things too sweet), because I remain incredibly recipe-bound.

Vi writes (and draws!)about small comforts: tāng yuán.

Azuire writes ٹیڑھی کھی, about comfort food that's monolingual (and not):

What I felt when I discovered that اچار was not called that by others (and I know it was اچار because I'd had an argument about it) was shock. Pure and simple. The English names of food-things that had previously existed only hypothetically were now widely accepted as the only names for things. It felt incomplete, inaccurate.

In comfort fooding, Glass_Icarus maps a history of her comfort food.

I've realized that I don't so much rely on specific foods for comfort as I do on cooking and eating with specific groups of people. 火鍋 with my immediate family is different from 火鍋 with my relatives in Taiwan is different from hotpot with all the different permutations of my "usual suspects," friends from ballroom/undergrad. Dim sum with my "American grandma" is different from dim sum with my Chinese family friends (where there's never any explanation involved but the check-grabbing fights remain the same).

Sam Miskiv writes on disordered eating and veganism (and, in a way, comfort food).

Ephemere talks Hapag-kainan, dibdib: My language is one that eats and is eaten. If one is to speak to me of comfort and discomfort -- speak to me of food. And of rice.

Linstar writes about what makes comfort food:

I’ve often been asked what my favourite food is and I have very usually replied with something along the lines of my mum’s laksa or my mum’s spring rolls or something to that effect. My mum’s cooking. It wasn’t until recently when I was sitting down talking to a work colleague that I actually realised some of my favourite comfort foods aren’t necessarily my mum’s cooking at all, but my mum’s cooking brings an association of love and comfort. I’ve actually come to realise my favourite comfort foods are anything that can be shared, and that it’s the company more than anything which makes comfort food comforting.

And a little aside: Counter Culture, a book which collected food histories from the kids that Lifting Voices works with. Their funding deadline is past but the book looks great!


And now, with my spoon in one hand and my chopsticks in the other, I am off to eat my own comfort food, though I failed to blog about it. Thank you for reading Potluck 2! Potluck is intended to be an occasional carnival for multicultural and intersectional discussions of food, including but not limited to food discussions intersecting with disability, gender, sexuality, fat, animal rights, and cultural and racial issues. If you are interested in hosting the next Potluck, please drop myself or glass icarus a line!