For the last two weeks we've been on a road trip back east to visit family and friends. It was a wonderful trip full of love and nostalgia, new beginnings, reconnections, and slow good byes. And as always seems to be the case, at the center of it all was food.

Food is really so much more to us than just a necessary source of fuel. Cars require gas, after all, and they don't linger around filling stations for hours, reluctant to go home after a long, satisfying refueling. Mama vans and Papa SUVs don't yearn for the little sports cars to come home, to be plied with one tempting tank after another. And itty bitty compacts don't reach out tiny starfish hands to hold the gas nozzle closer. In myriad and indefinable ways, eating is at the core of our oh-so-human lives.

And so, in a way, the last two weeks have been all about food for us, even as they have been all about family and friends and homecomings.

In Ithaca, New York: watching nine day old grandbaby Laney Grace and her mom navigating the early days of breast feeding. What a moving reminder that food is as much about bonding and love as it is about energy and growth.

Those of us past the nursing stage ate sautéed scallops, grilled vegetables, and pasta. The scallops were harvested by a fisherman friend of theirs, the vegetables were brought from a Bloomington farm by us, and almost everything was cooked by my granddaughter's parents with only minimal help from me.

Geez, it's hard for me to stop being the mom and let the kids do the cooking, even though my son-in-law has cooked professionally and my step daughter is a culinary whiz. They just had a baby, for crying out loud - LET ME COOK THE DINNER!!!

At least we got to pick up the check the next night - a lovely, leisurely meal outdoors in gentle flower-scented air with soft blues playing in the background, and Laney Grace asleep in her basket at our feet.

In Glens Falls, north of Albany: having a crazy burger cookout with my mom and my sister's family -many of whom I hadn't seen in six years. Reconnecting with my teenage nephews, more interested in their friends than in a long absent aunt, and my exotically beautiful eleven year old niece who made us all cream and berry filled pastry cups for dessert. I wanted to take her home with me. How could I have missed six years of these sweet kids?

How could I have forgotten how truly at home you can feel with the people who share your history?

In Port Washington: lunching on a veranda looking out on the Long Island Sound with my two oldest friends - vintage 1964. We were the grown ups now, eating toasted bagels with cream cheese and the lox that always grossed me out as a kid, forgoing the fries for fresh fruit salad, drinking iced tea, unsweetened. Not a sign of the Pop Tarts and Fritos we used to live on.

We had never eaten a post-adolescent meal together, and I felt as though I were dressed up in my mom's clothes, with her too-big shoes on my feet and her bright red lipstick on my mouth.

Two of us had breakfast one morning - carry-out from a deli - sitting on a bench at the Town Dock. As we watched bossy sea gulls, sailing boats, and jets coming in to land at La Guardia, we caught up on three decades of our news. Out of the blue, I felt compelled to order an egg salad sandwich, something I haven't done in years. Eaten just blocks away from our old elementary school, it really hit the spot.

We stuck together for dinner at my 30th high school reunion. There is nothing like food to bring out the teenager in nearly-fifty-year-olds. Saved seats, closed cliques, cool tables and lost souls - it was eerily familiar. At least now more of us moved from table to table, more of us reached out, more of us knew that high school cool in the cafeteria was a lousy predictor of future happiness and success.

Pittsburgh, Pa.: having dinner with my dad and my brother's family at my father's favorite restaurant. They make excellent Italian food there, and are patient with the awkward wheel chair and the mess we make with two little kids and an old man whose hands shake so badly that his food doesn't always get to his mouth.

My dad was a journalist in his time, a witty, urbane, charming man who loved to dine out and entertain a crowd. An excess of good living and a stroke have robbed him of his words.

Still, he loves nothing so much as going out to eat, and he can still put a steak away like no one I know.

I brought him two of his favorite foods, a Middle Eastern spice mix called za'tar to sprinkle on Syrian bread with olive oil, and a jar of Sander's chocolate sauce from his native Detroit. They made him grin with delight. When words won't work, sometimes food can do the job just fine.

Homeward bound: getting hungry on the west side of Columbus, Ohio. On an earlier trip to Pittsburgh, when Dad first had his stroke, awash in fresh grief we had no appetites at all. Straying from the highway somewhere near Dayton, we stumbled on the Golden Jersey Inn, a dairy farm that had converted itself into a restaurant, miniature golf park, and petting zoo.

The promise of fresh milk and cream, local produce, and home-made jams and preserves enticed us. We went in and breathed the aroma of home cooking and our appetites came back in a rush. We ate the ultimate in comfort food - coca cola pot roast, fried chicken, incredible sweet potato casserole, strawberry shortcake, bread pudding. Everything fresh, everything delicious. Balm for the hungry stomach, and for the broken heart.

These days, knowing the restaurant is waiting, our stomachs start to rumble around Columbus. Toward the end of this last, joyful trip home, we tucked into meatloaf and gravy with perfectly lumpy mashed potatoes, homemade macaroni and cheese, maybe the best coleslaw I've ever eaten, and fresh strawberry milk shakes. I'm glad you don't have to be in need of solace to relish comfort food.

Back home again in Indiana: looking inside the refrigerator, empty except for some highly dubious cheese that has been there for a long time and is making its presence known. Fortunately, the cooler that we have dragged across country with us is full. We swapped the gorgeous Indiana produce we left with for delicacies we discovered along the way. It's a good thing, because we are hungry again.

Christine Barbour would love to hear form readers about food and favorite dining experiences. E-mail her at cbarbour@heraldt.com. Next week, Food Fare partner Jennifer Piurek reports on her time well spent as a student at Bloomington Cooking School.