I’ve always been a stress eater. When the going got tough, I got busy eating. In my twenties, bags of peanut M&Ms were college exam study buddies; I devoured them seven at a time for good luck so I’d pass my journalism classes. As a New York City publicist, my remedy to a crummy day was picking up a crumbly apple turnover from Zabar’s on my way home. Don’t get me started on the dating disappointments—like the guy who, after a few dinners, invited me to the Super Bowl only to ghost me on the big day. My game day MVP was a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. 

My relationship with stress-eating experienced a seismic shift in my late thirties, when my seventy-four-year-old mother suddenly passed away. She still lived in New Jersey, while I’d moved to Raleigh several years earlier. A four-pack-a-day smoker for most of her life, my mother had asthma and COPD, but nothing stopped her. My mom was invincible as she and my dad wintered in Florida and spent weekends dancing and going to shows in their retirement community. Mom loved visiting Atlantic City and playing the slots, though the one-armed bandits never wore her out. We were incredibly close, speaking on the phone several times a day, and she was my go-to for our favorite family recipes like roasted chicken, potato latkes, and chicken noodle soup. In the year after her death, I mourned, but instead of eating my feelings, I unintentionally found a different way to use food for comfort. I cooked up a storm. Daily.

I became obsessed with Food Network, especially Emeril Live and Essence of Emeril. Along with the whirlwind of taking care of my family, which included little ones aged five and two, I “bammed!” my way through new recipes. There was something soothing and therapeutic in the repetition of chopping and dicing, a meditative quality to the stirring and ladling of soups and sauces. 

And all I did was taste. I didn’t make meals out of the dishes springing from my test kitchen, but I also didn’t want the food to go to waste. So instead of shoveling everything into my gullet or the garbage, I ferried portions to friends all over North Raleigh. My favorite appetizer from that year was orange-glazed chicken wings, which became a welcome dinner to a sick mom friend with small kids. A white spinach lasagna made a delicious one-pan entree when it was my turn to host supper club. Baking was never my thing, but a dense chocolate ganache topped with fresh raspberries and homemade whipped cream became my favorite potluck dish. My friends didn’t mind a bit; I’m a good cook, and they were eager taste-testers and frequent diners in my home. 

During those twelve grieving months, if I wasn’t in the kitchen, I stayed busy ferrying my kids to school and activities, often crying silently in my car so they wouldn’t know mommy was sad. Or I spent time working on a novel about a New York City single gal with a dying mother, my heartbreak ever-present. I found comfort and distraction by hosting frequent dinner parties and two big bashes for fifty guests each: a thirty-fifth birthday party for my husband and a baby shower for a good friend. I was the caterer, handling all the cooking and serving myself. My kitchen became stocked with professional catering equipment, including chafing dishes, tiered food stands, and enough dishes and flatware to serve fifty. For my husband’s birthday party, I hired a local wine store for tastings, and when the owner learned that I would be making and serving all the food, he proposed we partner in a catering business. (But I was a writer, not a caterer, so I kindly declined.)

It wasn’t so strange that I found comfort in preparing food after my mother’s passing. In the suburban New Jersey house where I grew up, my mother believed food was love. Her modus operandi was rooted in her childhood; she was a Holocaust survivor, starved through teen years spent in a war-torn Lithuania ghetto and a concentration camp. She told stories about her first post-war year when she worked in a Vienna hotel kitchen and ate everything in sight. Happy laughter accompanied her retelling of how fat she got in only a few months. 

One of my strongest childhood memories is hearing my mother ask every visitor crossing our threshold, “Can I get you something to eat?” Our cupboards were well-stocked, as if my mom’s stacking of cans and boxes of food was her way of building a tin and cardboard wall to keep out future hunger. 

When the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death passed, my fever for whipping up new dishes waned, though the experience wasn’t for naught. As a fledgling fiction writer, food began infusing my prose and became fodder for many articles and essays. 

With hindsight, I know my year of comforting myself with cooking gave birth to my food writing journey—and one more thing I owe to my mom.