Comfort food means different things to different people. It’s tied to memory, to home. For my father, this means spaghetti and meatballs, like his grandmother, who barely spoke English, used to make. For my mother, it’s all-American Thanksgiving dinner, complete with cranberry sauce, which she has made for her family every year since she was fourteen. For my best friend from high school, it’s fresh corn on the cob, like she ate every summer with her cousins in Michigan.
Even for me, comfort food can mean many things. Often, it’s simple macaroni and cheese, baked with a breadcrumb topping. Other times, I mimick my father and go for hearty spaghetti with rich, red sauce. On cold winter mornings, however, my favourite thing in the world is maple polenta.
Polenta is comforting in and of itself: I have a theory that anything slow cooked on the stovetop with a wooden spoon is automatically comfort food. Polenta takes time and patience, but it’s worth it, especially when stained with a little bit of pure, Canadian maple syrup and some sweet butter.
I don’t make maple polenta often: I’m of the morning coffee camp and generally don’t eat until around noon or one. But a few days ago, when Toronto was dusted with just a little bit of white powder, I knew that it was a maple polenta kind of morning.