When I was around 11 or 12, my Aunt Pat sent me a long article that she had cut out of the newspaper. It was entitled “A Cold Potato at Midnight” and was illustrated with a black and white sketch of a person in a bathrobe – I think it was a man but wouldn’t swear to it - standing in front of his/her open refrigerator at midnight, rooting through it for a snack, presumably in this case a cold potato. I was flattered that she had enough trust in my intellect to send me something so long and strange and, at first glance, such adult prose.
Oh My God, I loved that article. I read it over and over; even though I was in middle school, I could completely relate to the idea of a specific food bringing one comfort. I don’t mean this in the sense of emotional overeating but rather that there is (or should be) one food item in everyone’s life that is a mainstay, a go-to, when all is not right with the world. It doesn’t fix anything really, you’re not eating your feelings, but it is somehow equivalent to a hug and, after eating it, the world is a little bit more stable, a little less hurtful and you can power on – if only for a little while.
I kept the clipping for years but, during one of my many moves, it went missing. I truly love Internet research and discovered that, rather than a literary article by a Washington Post writer as I had always assumed, it was an excerpt from Mary MacLane’s A Diary of Human Days. I have attached a link to the free ebook below if you are interested. The chapter that I love starts at page 159 and I was delighted to have the opportunity to read it in its entirety. Feel free to scroll down but, if you are in the right mood, it is actually quite a lovely book in its own right (though not necessarily a cheerful one). You never know what work of art or page of prose will struck a chord of recognition but, for some reason that simple concept has stuck with me since childhood and I think about various sentences from the article fairly often, especially in times like now where, to use the author's own words, "shadow-things (are) piled too near".
Food as comfort is not a novel idea, in fact comfort food is a whole culinary genre, also usually involving potatoes. There is a scene in the movie Ratatouille which illustrates that concept beautifully; a young Anton Ego comes home weeping after falling off his bicycle and his mother comforts him, sits him down at the kitchen table and serves him a huge bowl of steaming ratatouille, to be eaten with a spoon. All is then right in his world again. L.'s ratatouille equivalent is ochazuke, a Japanese dish of rice thinned out into a gruel with green tea and topped with nori flakes, usually served when one is ill. I sometimes wonder, when he is an adult cooking for himself, if this comfort food will become his go-to cold potato equivalent because the "cold potato at midnight" concept is different from regular comfort food, in my opinion.
I find the idea of this thing that one eats solely for one's own solace, standing up in front of one's open fridge, secretly, in the dead of night, a really intriguing one. A certain amount of ritual is most certainly involved and the item is probably served in a special dish. All manners and expectations are set aside; this is one-on-one emotional regrouping. I love the image of the author standing with a cold boiled pink potato in one hand and a salt shaker in the other. My "cold potato at midnight" is, for such a food enthusiast, a really boring one - a simple cup of cocoa, probably because my mother used to make it for me when I was down (and mine never tastes as good as hers did).
That being said, I never drink cocoa at other times but, when in emotional turmoil, it is my go-to item. It is only ever drunk late at night; it only works if I am in my rattiest bathrobe with my hair pulled back messily. It has to be made only for me - no friendly sharing or making an extra cup for someone else - only one serving's worth will do. The milk has to be whole, it has to be at just the right temperature. I use 2 lumps of sugar and a tablespoon of premium cocoa; it doesn't taste the same with plain granulated sugar but Hershey's cocoa will do in a pinch. Sometimes I add a pinch of salt, but never anything more, no cinnamon, no splash of coffee to make it into a mocha - simple is what I want. It tastes best served in one of the large, handle-less, rectangular porcelain sushi restaurant cups that live at my family's summer house but, ultimately, any mug will do. The cocoa works its restorative magic best when slowly sipped in the near dark, curled up on the couch with fingers laced around the mug, no proper handle holding here. 15 minutes later, the world is a slightly less hostile place and, as Mary MacLane says, I am "fattened in spirit". Things are less bleak and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel again, even if I still feel that the tunnel is exceedingly long.
What is your "cold potato at midnight"? What food and/or food ritual restores you and gives you strength? What makes you "roundly replete" at midnight?
I, Mary MacLane, A Book of Days, here.
Image by Cathy Thorne from everydaypeoplecartoons.