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I just finished Catherine Newman’s Wreck and ohhh my heart—what an absolute comfort read. The kind that settles over you like your favorite cashmere throw, the one that somehow smells like cookies and resilience. I didn’t want it to end. It’s the perfect reminder that even when life goes full tilt, mystery rashes, baffling medical crises, and industrial quantities of poultry being aggressively spatchcocked in the background, you can still laugh hysterically with the people you love.
And best of all?
The family’s collective obsession with CHEX nachos—a dish that earns a humiliating one star on recipe boards. One. Star. And yet in the book, it becomes the culinary glue that holds them together. Chaos cuisine at its finest.
Naturally, this made me reflect on my own family’s emotional food quirks. And listen… we have issues. Deep, longstanding, deliciously questionable ones.
We once went through three years where we ate only white things, due to our collective neurodivergent fatigue.
Additionally, for reasons no one can recall, my family possesses a year-round fixation with eggnog and stuffing.
Eggnog of every variety:
Alcoholic.
Non-alcoholic.
“Dutch-style” (news to me).
Random artisanal concoctions in glass bottles with wrong-sounding labels like Yuletide Essence.
If it’s vaguely creamy and seasonally inappropriate, my family will chug it like hydration is a competitive sport.
Then there’s the stuffing.
Oh, the stuffing. I make it from scratch—often starting with the bread.
But we are talking Stove Top — by the case.
Every flavor.
Piled in the pantry like we’re prepping for a winter that lasts nine years.
It’s not elegant. It’s not aspirational. It’s… comfort.
And weirdly, it shows up for every major emotional event, good or bad.
Breakup? Stuffing.
Job promotion? Stuffing.
Mystery illness? Eggnog.
Existential dread? CHEX nachos, apparently.
There’s something beautiful about it… the strange, silly, edible rituals that say I love you, I see you, pass me the thing that sounds disgusting and makes absolutely no sense, but somehow makes everything better.
So now I want to know:
Tell me your culinary confessions. The weirder, the better.
Yours, in melty cheese and cereal - xoxo - gotham girl
PS - I am a human typo. Amnesty appreciated.
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