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I’m ready to talk about comfort food.

The first recorded use of the term “comfort food” was in an article about obesity, published by the Palm Beach Post in 1966. The headline was, “Sad Child May Overeat.” The article talks about how people turn to the foods they associate with childhood when they’re under “severe distress.” Since then, researchers have explored the chemistry and psychology of comfort food. In a 2015 study, students were asked to tell stories about breakups and fights with loved ones. Then they were given potato chips. There was also a control group of students who weren’t forced to relive any interpersonal trauma, and were just paid to have a snack in a lab. The participants who told the sad stories (and had healthy relationship patterns to begin with) ranked the potato chips as more delicious than the participants who didn’t. This, apparently, is scientific evidence of a link between our feelings about food and our relationships.

This all seems pretty straightforward. You don’t have to do a blind study to know that “sad child may overeat.” The concept of comfort food is so innate and universal that the New York Times asked all the democratic presidential candidates what their favorite comfort foods were, presumably in an effort to humanize them. But then, many of the candidates answered this question as though they had just panic-Googled “normal foods for human mouths.” Answers ranged from vegan cupcakes to whiskey to beef jerky. Cory Booker said “veggies.” So maybe the concept of comfort food is more complicated than it appears.

The experts agree that comfort food is more about emotional associations and memories than it is about the food itself. So, it makes sense that a lot of comfort food recipes are for things like “mom’s apple pie”, or “arroz con pollo de la abuela”, or “meaballs just like nonna used to make with her loving, arthritic hands.” It also helps to explain my own complicated relationship with comfort food.

See, I enjoy fresh, well-made food. But I also enjoy food that comes in canned gels and frozen nuggets and boxed powders full of MSG. I can tell that it’s not good, but I turn to it in times of “severe distress” anyway. I’m realizing now that it’s probably cultural. I come from practical, Midwestern stock. My foremothers didn’t have 100-year-old recipes for tagliatelle or hours to let it dry in the Mediterranean sun. They had six(ish) months of winter, driveways to shovel and condensed cream of mushroom soup. These are the foods of my people. To me, they taste like love

Maybe it’s unwise to admit this. It’s possible that you all have totally normal comfort-cravings, and you’ll never look at me the same again once you hear how I feel about Chef Boyardee. But it’s also possible that you have food secrets of your own. (Cory Booker what are you hiding???) In this time of isolation, I’m willing to be vulnerable about this in the hopes that it might build some solidarity between us. So, here are my comfort foods:

Canned noodles

Ravioli in a can was my hands-down favorite lunch entree growing up, but I was in my 20’s before I realized it was supposed to be pasta. To say that SpaghettiOs are “imitating” regular spaghetti is not quite right. That would imply a bumbling but lovable, aspirational quality I’m not sure they deserve. It’s more like SpaghettiOs have created a mocking parody out of everything spaghetti believes in.

Obviously, fresh pasta is better – but it’s complex, expensive and challenging. It tastes like adulthood. Sometimes, I’d rather be reminded of a simpler time, when my most complicated project was figuring out how to set the VCR to tape Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman while I was at church. Sometimes I’d rather have Chef Boyardee.

Pepperoni Pizza Rolls

Pizza rolls have little to do with pizza. Or rolls, actually. But to be fair, the more accurate title “Pepperoni Lava Nuggets” is not as snappy. Pizza rolls combine two of my favorite things: pocketed foods and nitrites. My mom didn’t buy them for me often when I was growing up. This was partly because of the nitrites and partly because she didn’t understand the appeal herself. When we visited my grandma though, she would always make sure to have some in the freezer for me.

In college, I exercised my independence by buying little boxes for myself and stashing them in my dorm room mini freezer. I cooked them in my roommate’s microwave whenever I wanted a hot, soggy study snack. As is so often the case the first time you make a family recipe on your own, there was something missing.*

*An oven. The something was an oven.

Cheese food

I know what real cheese is. Brie, cheddar, gruyere, Parmigiano Reggiano…I’m into it. I also know that “cheese products” like Cheeze Whiz, Velveeta and Easy Cheese are not actually, legally cheese. But that doesn’t make me love that orange, shelf-stable goo any less.

Cheese food features in some recipes that my family has passed down through generations. My mom used to make a dish that she learned from her dad called “Ukrainian pizzas.” It consisted of Canadian rye bread, spread with Cheez Whiz and topped with slices of Ukrainian garlic sausage. The “pizza” was then toasted in the oven until the Cheez turned dull and brown at the edges. And another one of my grandma’s signature party recipes is a dip made out of a brick of Velveeta and a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes, melted together in the microwave. When she sets the “queso” on the table in a large Pyrex mixing bowl, my aunts, uncles, siblings and cousins immediately gather around. We dip as many tortilla chips into it as we can before it sets into a cool, gelatinous mass. Velveeta: It brings families together.

Creamed peas on toast

Unlike the other items on this list, this dish isn’t trying imitate some other, more respectable food. It is entirely its own deal. My mom used to make it when we were reaching the end of our pantry stores. The dish begins with a bechamel-type sauce of butter, flour and milk. When the sauce has thickened, frozen peas are stirred in. Then, the whole mixture is served hot, over toasted sandwich bread. Until yesterday, I thought this recipe was exclusive to my family. But a quick Google search taught me two things: 1) People I am not related to eat it as well! And 2) It is impossible to take a photo of creamed peas on toast that does not make it look like swamp goblin barf. (If you are sensitive to graphic food images, stop scrolling now)

Every time I have moved somewhere new, creamed peas on toast has been one of my first meals. When I got to Ireland for my semester abroad, I called my mom to ask for the recipe.

“Recipe?” She said, “for the thing I used to make when we were out of actual food?”

“Yes,” I assured her, “that’s the one.” It was just what I wanted: something that was simple, dirt cheap and reminded me of home.

In the end, that’s what a lot of comfort food boils down to. So for what it’s worth, I want you to know that all your personal comfort food cravings are valid – whether you grew up with matzo ball soup, arroz con pollo, or Hamburger Helper. These foods are comforting because they remind us of where we came from and the people who love us. And if thinking about it that way helps you feel less guilty about dumping a full brick of Velveeta in your mac and cheese tonight, just like mom used to do, then I’ve done my job.

The recipe on the next page is not for creamed peas on toast. In a kind of thematic reversal, it’s for a homemade, loose interpretation of a pre-packaged comfort food favorite: Pop Tarts. It’s a good, long-ish project if you want to do some comfort baking. But if you want to comfort-eat something that tastes like childhood – complete with s’more gel filling and frosting shellacked on top – you should probably just buy a box of the real thing.