Review: Comfort Eating by Grace Dent

Title: Comfort Eating: The Joy of Secret Snacks
Author: Grace Dent
First Publication Date: October 5, 2023
Genre: Non Fiction, Essays
Rating: ☕☕☕☕☕︎ (4.5/5)

Blurb

The foods we turn to behind closed doors are deeply personal, steeped in nostalgia and topped with a healthy dollop of guilty pleasure. In Comfort Eating, Grace Dent throws open her kitchen cupboards to reveal why we hold these secret snacks and naughty nibbles so dear to our hearts.
Exploring her go-to comfort foods through a series of joyous encounters, Grace reflects on the memories they uncover and pays tribute to her parents, the people who taught her what comfort eating truly means. Along the way, she catches up with some famous friends to chat about their own favourites – from Jo Brand’s fried bread sandwich and Russell T. Davies’ ‘butterpepperrice’ to Scarlett Moffat’s crushed-Wotsits-topped beans on toast and many, many more . . .
So grab a plate and pull up a unfussy, honest and filled to the brim with heartwarming stories and comfort food tales, Comfort Eating is the perfect treat for food lovers everywhere. (via Goodreads)

Thoughts

Sometimes a human being just need food they can make on autopilot. They want tastes and textures that will fill their stomach and make it tell their brain that everything is going to be alright.

Given my obsession with food-themed books lately, Grace Dent’s Comfort Eating was a sweet surprise I stumbled upon while browsing the Food and Drink section at Waterstone’s. This book is based on her podcast of the same name, which has now since become one of my favorite comfort listens (another one is the Dish Podcast 😉). Divided into sections that explores the major food groups of most people’s comfort foods: cheese, butter, pasta, bread, potatoes, and sweet treats — Grace shares historical insights and personal anecdotes about each, seen through the lens of her working class upbringing. She also included related snippets from interviews she’s made through the years in her podcast and some very lovely recipes. The book is full of food-related memories that are sure to tug at your heartstrings, especially if you grew up in the UK during the 80s, or if you’re simply someone who cherishes the role food plays in one’s life. It’s a lovely reminder that food and the experiences around it is a universal language we all understand.

She talked a lot about her family, especially her mam and her dad – and I think that’s the ultimate heart of this book. As much as I enjoyed reading about other people’s memories, it was Grace’s own stories that resonated with me the most. I know the premise will be too close to her podcast and that a lot of this book will definitely pull from those episodes, I wasn’t prepared for the emotional whiplash this book packed in its pages. At its core, this is a book deeply rooted in her grief over losing both of her parents (particularly her mom). And, as is often the case, that kind of literature always pulls me in.

At one point, I flipped ahead to the final stories and came across the section featuring Siobhán McSweeney, centered around sweet treats (here’s the episode link, if you want to listen). I read it, and the end of it made me teary-eyed and emotional. This book is full of moments like that. A book that is deeply personal, crafted with care, and written with so much heart. Grace Dent writes with a warmth and relatability that made me wish I could be her friend. But alas, I’ll happily settle for being a new recruit in her podcast’s fan club. I listen to it now on my walks to work, and it brings me so much comfort — hearing people reminisce and talk so openly about the food that makes them happy. It made me happy too. Reading this book, while casually getting obsessed with listening to the accompanying episodes, was such a lovely experience.

This book made me realize that I’ve probably been comfort eating my whole life (and that it is probably not healthy), but I’ve always taken pride in eating well and eating in a way that brings me joy. Here’s to hunger as an emotional state, and to eating to soothe the soul, without guilt! 🤍

In Conclusion

If I could summarize my opinion of this book in one sentence, it’s this: Comfort Eating just feels like a warm hug. this book is effortlessly funny, real, and relatable, filled with heartwarming (and sometimes heartbreaking) moments. It’s steeped in nostalgia on every page. If you are into that vibe — of food holding memories, and of food bringing comfort — this book (and her podcast) is definitely for you. Just one warning: it will make you hungry. 🤭

P.S. While I was leafing through some of the reviews for this book, I noticed a lot of people saying that Grace Dent’s other book, Hungry, is even better. That definitely piqued my curiosity because I already loved this one. So, it’s going straight onto my to-read list. Excited for it! ✨

My Comfort Foods

Reading this book and poring over the various comfort food that people turn to, I got to thinking about what specific foods keeps me comfort as well. What’s mine? Apparently:

• a bowl of egg salad, thickly slathered over untoasted white bread, with a side of hot mug of instant chocolate or coffee milk — nostalgic; OR
• a thick slice of Lidl White Sourdough Bloomer, toasted lightly (just enough to form a hard, crisp slight crust at the top) slathered with generous amount of salted Irish butter (preferably Kerrygold), with a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt to finish — indulgent, ; OR
• a mug of hot Royal Blend tea with a splash of milk, with anything slightly sweet dessert – posh.

Recipes from the book that I wanted to try at some point (a note to myself, really)

• Wensleydale and apricot jam sandwich
• Fried chunks of Camembert, served with bramble jam
• Pasta with sage butter and salted ricotta
• Russell T. Davies’ Butterpepperrice (episode link)
• Pan of spaghetti, feta, and tabasco (c/o Saoirse-Monica Jackson) (episode link)
• ‘Butterslut‘ pasta (c/o Grace Dent)

Rating

Quotable Quotes

These things remind you of home in some way, and that is the every essence of comfort eating.

There was no great goodbye, just a fizzling out and half a year of no contact at all.

Time and again our comfort foods are a root back to a moment in time when we were truly happy.

Is it out of date? Who cares. Pasta will outlive you. IF they found a bag of pasta underneath one of the pyramids, it would probably be OK if you boiled it for twelve minutes and grated some Parmesan over it.

– LOL

Life is impermanent, and everything changes. I love tinned pasta because I like to cling to the small things that are constant.

GET THE BOOK >> Faber | Waterstones | Amazon | Bookshop.org

About the Author

British columnist, broadcaster and author.

Between 2003-2010, Dent published eleven young adult novels, and was also a presenter on BBC2’s The Culture Show, and a magazine and newspaper journalist, including a TV column for the Guardian.

From 2011 to 2017 she wrote a restaurant column for the Evening Standard, and became the Guardian’s restaurant critic in 2018. She is a regular judge on the BBC’s MasterChef UK and makes frequent appearances in Channel 4’s television series Very British Problems.

Grace said in her role as an author for teens: ‘….kids who claim to have never read anything longer than a text message are ploughing through my books nagging me for the next one. This makes me insanely proud.’

She lives in East London with her husband, who works in the music industry. When she’s not writing comedy Grace is to be found ‘faffing about on the Internet’ or ‘faffing about in the garden or kitchen’ or ‘just ‘faffing about generally. “I’m an excellent ‘faffer.”

Comfort Eating Podcast | Instagram | The Guardian Profile

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