I thought I'd make a thread about comfort food. I searched first, in case there already was such a thread, and there is! But it's from 2004 so after agonizing deliberation I decided to make a new one rather than bump the old.
I think the main distinguishing factors of comfort food are:
They're probably something you had as a child, and you've come to associate that food with feeling happy and safe.
Most often they are unhealthy to some degree. They're likely to contain a larger proportion of fats and/or sugar than your regular diet.
I think the second point is partly down to nature - we've evolved to seek out high energy food: when food was in short supply, getting some honey from a hive, or succeeding in hunting or trapping a tasty animal could make the difference between life and death - so our bodies have evolved to reward us with a big dose of endorphins when we eat such food so as to reinforce this life-sustaining behaviour.
But it's also become a social thing - our parents gave us cake and chocolate as a treat on special enjoyable holiday occasions. They gave us sweets as a reward for doing well or as a compensation when we were sick or had to do something painful or difficult.
Some comfort foods may not be unhealthy - it might be a meal that we often ate in a safe and loving family environment: spaghetti with meatballs, shepherd's pie, or baked beans on toast.
So, what are your favourites? What do you cook (or yearn to cook) when you're feeling a little run down or under pressure? Maybe it doesn't need any cooking! Chocolate will be high on most people's list! Very few of us cook our own chocolate these days - we tend to think of it as a commodity.
My mom's mashed potatoes are my number one comfort food. I have tried to make them myself, but I just don't have her touch, so instead I just insist she make them for me once every visit.
I think this would qualify as a comfort food, but it's also very easy. In a pot of water cut up some potatos and kiebasa and cook till the potatos are soft. When you serve it, it can be dry with lots of butter on the potatos and salt to taste or with the broth. It gets better when reheated several times and if there is broth left after several reheatings the broth goes good on bread. It just keeps getting better.
Another is soucatash, just the plane and simple corn and lima beans, cooked with lots of butter, and again reheating just makes it better.
If you really like to cook this is more like an all day project, but it is really good comfort food. From 'Cooking out of this world' edited by Anne Mccaffrey, a favorite recipe of Brian Aldiss, 'Risotto al Pollo, Chicken Risotto'. Really good, and good reheated, but plan to take all day.
I don't really have the nostalgia comfort foods, prolly because my mom didn't like cooking and my dad mostly cooked things with a lot of meat, which I didn't like when I was a kid.
But soup always makes me feel better. Tragically, I have to make my own when I'm sick. (Pho works, too, though.)
Oh, man, and when I had surgery and couldn't cook for a while, I started missing my own cooking really hard. I am such a dick.
I had tried to understand what was meant by 'comfort food' before but the safe and happy as a child thing wasn't spelled out. Now I understand it a bit better and also why I couldn't seem to get it before.
I tend to not eat when I'm unhappy.
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Much of MADNESS, and more of SIN, and HORROR the soul of the plot.
I used to equate eating with stress as a kid, I really didn't eat much and my mom and I would always fight at the dinner table. Most meals my mom cooked regularly are still avoided.
Lima bean casserole, just like Mom used to make. Thrown together with that food slob dish, Kraft mac 'n' cheese, it's a little slice of nostalgic heaven.
Beef Chow Fun (which nobody makes around here, dammit). Not really from childhood; more from my finally-out-of-the-house relief period.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
Mushroom noodle casserole, basically egg noodles with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and sauteed mushrooms.
Rice cooked with bullion - The problem with this is that Herb Ox changed their bullion recipe about ten years ago and it no longer tastes like it did when I was a kid. Oxo bullion from England tastes like my childhood memories, but for some reason I can't find the chicken bullion anywhere anymore. Beef and vegetable are still available, but no one has the chicken and I'm in withdrawal.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
I had tried to understand what was meant by 'comfort food' before but the safe and happy as a child thing wasn't spelled out. Now I understand it a bit better and also why I couldn't seem to get it before.
I tend to not eat when I'm unhappy.
Me too, sort of. I usually lose my appetite when I'm upset or unhappy; and I don't really get that nostalgia type of feeling from food, which now that I think about it, is maybe because I was always on weight gaining diets when I was a kid, so I always had to eat things I didn't want to and more than I wanted to. Not like it was traumatizing or anything, but food was sort of an obligation or a utilitarian thing or something.
But after I got that one The Little Muffin guy, I decided I should learn to actually like cooking. I knew how to make food, but I figured if I could learn to actually like making food, I'd be better at it and I'd do it more often. And it worked. I actually do like cooking now, and I'm pretty good at it, even.
So I don't get the nostalgia thing from food, but there's still the natural feeling of contentment that any animal gets when their belly is full, plus I'm actually fairly good at cooking now, so it's kind of an accomplishment that I can make all these things that are better and usually cheaper than what you'd get anywhere else, and sometimes things that don't exist anywhere else. And I really like that part just because it makes me feel sort of competent and stuff.
Thing is, I didn't discover this kind of food until I was an immature adult. I didn't have any early childhood opportunity to discover it and establish it as a food to turn to in troubled times.