My Ex Introduced Me to Arepas. They’re Now My Favorite Comfort Food.

The term “arepa” did not exist to me until finally 3 many years ago. My awareness of Latin American delicacies was limited to the Mexican food items of my California hometown. We’re known for the La Victoria Taquerias and their specific orange sauce, but to me, the ideal Mexican spot is a income-only stand with picnic table seating serving classics like large burritos, tacos, and quesadillas stuffed so complete that they could possibly as nicely be burritos. Developing up, I’d be tricky-pressed to checklist foods from anyplace even more south of the border.

Now, my husband or wife and I pan-fry white cornmeal dough into tiny crispy disks and things them with salty, crumbly queso fresco and sautéed bell peppers at minimum twice a month for a Colombian/Venezuelan-inspired dinner.

Oddly plenty of, this staple meal of ours is a relic of my preceding marriage. My ex’s Colombian-born mother utilized to make arepas for breakfast, and I found out that the small corn pancakes transpired to be just the appropriate measurement for reheating in the toaster. They became an instantaneous preferred and to this working day, continue being my variety a single consolation foodstuff.

For anyone whose taking in and psychological overall health have often been inextricably linked, ease and comfort foods are a necessity for me. It’s a level of pleasure to just be ready to say I uncover particular food items comforting, a idea that has not normally occur simple for me. I’ve been relearning how to enjoy consuming considering the fact that I was eleven years old, when a mission to “eat healthy” took a darkish switch and sent me to the healthcare facility with complications relevant to anorexia.

In ingesting condition recovery, “safe foods” are the food items that continue to be following you’ve villainized all the many others. When you can not convey yourself to consume everything else, these pick out meals will be there. As I have recovered, “safe” food items have evolved into convenience food items, like peanut butter and banana smoothies, cereal, and scrambled eggs for dinner. They are for days of emptiness, times when I sense confused and anxious. They are my go-to when the entire world will not end spinning lengthy enough for me to grasp the strategy of filling my abdomen with just about anything far more elaborate. And now, that listing consists of arepas.

When my ex and I very first moved in jointly, we both equally discovered that we ended up having more constantly than we ever experienced. Mmonths into residing collectively, I observed myself unmotivated and apathetic. Anxiety assaults pounced on me and took above with out reason or warning.

We didn’t constantly realize what the other desired in these times, but my husband or wife was dependable when it arrived to creating dinner on the times when melancholy left my thoughts blank. “Hot corn disk?” he’d talk to (which is what I experienced taken to calling them). “Hot corn disk,” I would reply, and we’d share a being aware of smile.

3 elements had been all we needed for the savory pancake supper: pre-cooked white cornmeal, water, and salt. For the longest time, I was not exactly sure how to recreate the arepas on my own since he built them from memory. There were no measurements. He would merely warmth a little bowl of drinking water in the microwave, combine it into a larger bowl total of cornmeal, and sprinkle in a sprint of salt. Right after stirring it all together till it resembled the creamiest Thanksgiving mashed potatoes that were just about liquid, he kneaded the dough and remaining it to rest for a couple minutes. The closing action was frying them right until their yellowish shade turned golden brown. To me, they smelled like gourmet motion picture theater popcorn—one of the numerous scents of nostalgia. In some cases we slathered the arepas with my favorite vegan butter and fried some eggs alongside them for a extra nicely-rounded supper.

But no amount of money of convenience food items, not even arepas, could correct issues.

The grief that adopted our seemingly unavoidable breakup still left no home for food in my tummy. Some days I barely ate at all. My household feared I was relapsing, no make any difference how a great deal I tried to explain that the despair manufactured taking in irrelevant at best and extremely hard at worst. When I did begin having again, it was purely psychological. I’d get home from my all-working day partial hospitalization plan and swallow the sadness down with a parade of Hershey’s dark chocolate kisses.

Two months soon after leaving the clinic plan, I rejoined Bumble and arrived at out to a woman I had ghosted months before. It turned out she was in feeding on problem recovery, as well. We’ve been relationship for a 12 months now, and producing arepas jointly for nearly just as extended.

At very first, I felt awkward telling her about my comfort food items. She’d experienced arepas in the farmers’ marketplaces of Los Angeles, but under no circumstances realized how easy they were being to make at household. Of course, she was curious as to how I, a white girl with Italian and Swedish heritage, arrived to make this Colombian dish a element of my greatest hits list of recipes. Starting any sentence with “My ex…” early on in any romantic relationship is a bold and likely stupid move.

When you go by means of a separation, there are tracks you have to ban from your playlists and spots you can’t move with out experience a lump catch in your throat. We attach so quite a few factors to the memory of someone.

But when I make arepas now, the reduction doesn’t strike me in the very same way. Arepas are my point as substantially as they are my ex’s. He merely provided the introduction. I didn’t even have to contact and question for the recipe it is conveniently mentioned on the again of the cornmeal bag.

In my earlier relationship, I wanted to be any person but myself, since to me, that was the only way I would ever be enough. When it finished, I felt I had not only misplaced myself, but almost everything. But now, I’ve reclaimed the issues that are me and mine.

The silver lining was warm, round, and delicious.