Home Sweet Home

So I went home this weekend, (which is why this blog post comes later than I intended) and I found home to be just as lovely as I had left it. I'm from Canandaigua, New York, the westernmost (and best) of the Finger Lakes. But this is a food blog, so of course I'm here to talk about the food I ate while at home. The highlight of the weekend was my mother's chili, which I requested in extra large quantities so both my boyfriend and I would have a supply to last. My mother is an excellent cook. Not in the fancy souffle sort of way, but in an everyday, something thrown together sort of way. She cooks by ear, (mouth, nose?) rarely following a recipe. As such, her chili is never the same twice. This seems to go against the idea of comfort food, that it is dependable and you always know what you're getting. But with Mama's chili, it is always good and always tastes like her chili, even if the meaning of that changes with each batch.

I know I am not alone when I associate going home with food. We all seem to have certain food traditions that we can't separate from the feeling of being at home. I think this is especially important for me and other like me for whom the idea of home is rapidly evolving. Of course there is the flux, the in-betweeness of living the better part of the year away from my life long home while I'm here at school. But then there are also other changes afoot in my life. My father's job has come with an imminent threat of relocation. By the time I graduate college, moving home with my folks will probably mean moving to a place I've never been. And that's kind of scary. But it is made less so by the fact that the things that define home do not have to be tied to a geographic location. Important things, like my mother's chili, do not have to reside in one place for the rest of their life. In some odd way, the comfort I take in comfort food is that it is dynamic, untethered and always accessible, regardless of where the kitchen table stands.