Pasta – The Super Food

[Written in response to the question: What is your go-to comfort food?]

Penne pasta with garlic, Parmesan, a few green peas, and many tablespoons of butter. The butter is really key here so you can’t start thinking about how it isn’t healthy or will make you fat. If you need comfort food, you don’t care about those things. You just want to feel better right now.

Having to boil water and cook the pasta is a problem and can be a demoralizing delay if one really needs comfort. I get that. But quicker fixes – like chips or pudding one might put in a kid’s lunch – just make a person feel feckless and pitiful. Like you can’t even comfort eat right. Plus you can eat those things in thirty seconds whereas a big bowl of pasta takes a good while, one penne at a time.

A hearty, buttery, garlicky, cheesy bowl of pasta requires a glass of a decent box wine. A bold red or a Merlot. Don’t skimp on this part. A wine accompaniment to eating is fundamental to civilization and that’s what you want when you’re into comfort food – some way to right yourself and re-enter the world of the living and people who can string two words together without crying.

Pasta will make you strong when you are low, folks. I know this to be true.