Comfort foods evoke fond memories

“It’s food that at some point you have to eat with your hands,” she said. “At some point you have to pick up the bone and start digging out the marrow and eating that.”

“Food is a big thing in my family,” said Chen, who said her mom’s cooking would make the house smell great for hours and hours. “It was a social thing. We ate all our meals together.”

Whether its Chen’s beef noodle soup - a recipe handed down by her Taiwan-born mother - macaroni and cheese or brown stew chicken, there are certain foods that bring us warm feelings of comfort and being around loved ones.

Comfort foods make you feel cozy all over. Families have come together, fallen out and made peace around dinner tables.

And with the holidays fast approaching, comfort foods are on the minds of many Atlantans.

Though there are many definitions of comfort food, the feelings that the smells and memories evoke are universal, said Alex Hitz, who co-owned The Patio by the River restaurant in Atlanta and has written “My Beverly Hills Kitchen: Classic Southern Cooking with a French Twist,” a collection of personal stories and 175 revamped recipes of comfort foods.

“What I have found that comfort food can, yes, be something fairly heavy that makes you feel warm inside,” he said. “That’s probably the most recognized definition. But to me, comfort foods provoke memories for me one way or another. That’s what’s comforting to me. “

Michael Kuhar, a researcher and professor at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, said there are physical and emotional reasons that comfort foods provide so much, well, comfort.

They tastes good and they turn on the reward system - or the feel good system - in the brain, he said. Comfort foods also bring up memories of the family that were particularly fun. “Those memories will persist in our brain and make us feel good.”

Carla Hall, co-host of The Chew and author of a new cookbook, “Cooking with Love: Comfort Food That Hugs You” compares eating comfort food to getting a culinary hug.

“Whatever that thing is that takes you back to the place where you felt everything was perfect,” is comfort food, said Hall, who will be in Atlanta Nov. 17 to promote her cookbook. A native of Nashville, Hall said she often finds herself cooking the dishes she grew up with like hot water cornbread or collard greens when “I’m lonely or missing my family. It just reminds me of a time like my granmother’s Sunday suppers when the family was together.”

Although he stays on the go as president of Usher’s New Look Foundation, Shawn H. Wilson takes time to cook for his family most weekends and holidays.

“Food takes you back to that place of comfort,” said Wilson, who has also added a spaghetti sauce from his chef-brother to his comfort food repertoire. “We have good family times and we’re doing something together.” He’s now sharing that same experience with his children. ” We talk and laugh. It reminds me of my Big Mama and my dad, who taught me to cook a lot. We used to have deep talks in the kitchen.”

One of Kristin Jordan’s favorite comfort foods - cheesecake - is from the heart and for the soul.

The Snellville businesswoman and service producer at Victory World Church, learned how to make many desserts from scratch from her grandmother, “GiGi”, who also used the time to teach the young ones about God, life and to tell stories about the different people she had met.

“She used it as a ministry opportunity,” said Jordan, a mother of four and wife of singer and pastor Montell Jordan. “That’s where I first heard about God. I didn’t know she was teaching me those things, though, I thought I was just there for the cheesecake sign up.”

Jordan made sure that she taught all her children how to cook. Her oldest son worked as a chef for three years. “Funny, I used the same tactics (as my grandmother) without even knowing. Now that I think about it, we used to solve life’s big problems while I taught them how to cook.”