On comfort food.

I talk about tacos a lot. My affection for them is well-known - once, on a family vacation, I tried to eat fifty of them in a week (I was balked by food poisoning). I owned and operated a taco shop. I claim them to be one of my favorite foods. When asked what kind of taco I'm talking about when I say I love tacos, my response is usually 'I love them all.'

And while that is true, when I say that tacos are my favorite comfort food, I'm talking about a very specific kind of taco. I'm talking about the hardshells, the ground beef tacos. The ones you find in kits at the grocery store in the Ethnic Foods aisle. Unexciting, perhaps, but comfort food isn't meant to excite.

For a food to be a comfort food, it has to be more than about the food itself. Comfort is not found solely in an object - it is swaddled in meaning, in memory. Like a brand of cigarette you used to smoke or the road the house you grew up in is on. They might just be a cardboard box or a stretch of pavement to some, but to you, it's something special. It's a memory, a feeling.

And it's that feeling that gives us comfort. The act of putting two shells on the plate, two fingertips holding them upright. Spooning just the right amount of filling in. The cheese, the salsa. The chopped tomato, the leafy green. Years of studying the mechanics of the taco, learning what holds which ingredients in place. How much pressure at what angle makes the fillings squeeze out the other end.

That first bite. Teeth snapping through the shell quickly, too quickly to create fault lines throughout the remainder of the tortilla. The melding of textures between your teeth, the balance of flavor on your tongue. Measuring your bites to ensure even filling distribution as you work your way along. Knowing at the end of your second taco that you know exactly how many bites each taco afterwards will take.

This is what comfort is. It's familiarity. Ritual. In the face of uncertainty, a vast, shadowy future, it gives us shelter and strength. It is found in religion, in exercise, in what you do when you get home from work. Have respect for it when you see it in others. And most of all, have respect for it when you see it in yourself.