We need a comfort food thread … comfort for our tummies and our souls. Don’t we. It was cool yesterday so I bought free-range (always) eggs + a half-gallon of Silk vanilla soy + raisins. The teenage raccoons haven’t had my bread pudding yet. Nor have I for a while.
The recipe is in the warm recesses of my memories, and can be so easily improvised (with, say, grated orange peel). I cracked 8 eggs, poured in the soy and a half cup of sugar, and added dashes of cinammon, Madagascar vanilla and salt (don’t tell my doctor). I stirred it well, and put the raisins in to soak and soften. An hour later, I added a loaf of bread, roughly ripped, and poured it all into my generously buttered, ancient Le Creuset dutch oven. Into the oven with a pan of water (for steam). 350 degrees. 40 minutes. The knife was clean so out it came.
I’ve never seen the raccoons eat so fast. I heated it for b’fast with (shhhh!) butter. What’s your comfort food? Or, if it’s uncomfortable to talk about food when so many are hungry, how do you feed your own, and others’, souls?
We are retired. We sleep late, eat breakfast really as brunch, no lunch, light supper.
I am a Southerner all the way through, and I was raised on Southern traditional food. I love greens, all of them, collards, turnips with roots, all of them. Black-eyed peas, cornbread with creamed corn and a touch of sugar. And okra that just slides down the throat.
But back to brunch. Our local stores here only carry one kind of grits, well two if you count instant…which I don’t think counts at all. The other is so finely ground as to not even taste like grits.
So, we order ours from a South Carolina mill, and mix the yellow and white grits together. It is so good, though I realize only a Southerner could love it like I do. Include one poached egg and several strips of bacon. And my cholesterol stays under control as well.
Floridagal… You’re my kinda’ lady =) I forgot about the okra and collards…
Although I like the fried okra… better with catsup…
I feel guilty, but I just had “blarney chips” on a patio in the sunshine with some beer…
crispy crosscut fries, cheese, tomatoes, green onions and jalapeno’s…
um.
Man I love some comfort food… Since Half my family is eastern shore maryland, the other half is new england (both since the 1600s)… Comfort food for me is anything from Crab Cakes & Hush Puppies to Corned Beef & Boiled Cabbage.
Although I stick with the southern comfort (literally not the drink) when it comes to breakfast… Poached eggs over Scrapple, grits, bisquits piled over sausge gravy, and a post spliff. And hopefully Chicken fried steak and an old jar full of lemonade for lunch
It’s comfort for the soul maybe not the heart so much =)
I love grits and chicken fried stuff – which I first had in Dallas. I sure don’t eat those often enough. I can’t find any instant grits here. I found out those existed when I was down in Atlanta. I love the south.
Turkey dinner. Now there’s comfort food.
I have to echo that one… I love the south too.
I can understand why Sinatra sang about NYC and Chicago and even why Maceo Parker did “Moonlight in Vermont”…
But when I hear Ray Charles singing “…the road leads back to you…” and “moonlight through the pines…” in Goergia on My Mind
You only really ever have to live in GA once to get hooked.
(that and all the cheerwine, moonpies, and waffle houses you can shake a stick at)…
My stomach has been upset all day from the anger and the anguish… so let me offer some…
Soul Food
Oh my goodness, where to start. Mararoni and cheese, tapioca pudding, homemade cherry jelly (I just made some the other day), fresh hot bread . . .
but I’ll go with this one because it’s so simple. It’s peach season over in Yakima and my son’s in-laws brought us some peaches, so I made fresh peach crisp. Yum.
Peel and de-stone about four large peaches, then cut them into slices (you want about 3 cups of peach slices). Put the peaches in an 8×8 baking pan and cover them with 1/2 cup of sugar. If you want to be fancy, you can freeze a stick of butter and grate half of it over the top of the peaches and sugar; otherwise, do what I did. Just melt 1/4 cup of butter and pour it over the top.
Now make the topping:
3/4 cup oatmeal
1/4 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter (the other half of that stick)
Melt the butter. Mix the dry ingredients together, then stir in the melted butter until it’s all crumbly. Top the peach mixture with the topping and bake for 35-40 minutes at 375 degrees.
Serve hot with vanilla ice cream.
Chivas on ice…:)
I feed them roast chicken–it smells good as it cooks and it is very easy.
First get a chicken- oil it up with your favorite fat- shove some herbs and garlic under the skin- put it in the oven and at 425 for 15 minutes and then turn it down to 325.Leave it in there until the legs wiggle easily (just like a turkey).Meanwhile get your potatoes boiled and peeled.And carrots or turnips or whatever.mash up your potatoes while the chicky ‘ rests’. Take the juices from the bird and some fat and some flour and make a gravy.
I am a ‘seat of the pants cook’ –nothing is ever uniform.
Tried several Coronas and a couple of chicken-on-wheat toast this evening. Didn’t do much for the news induced headache.
Potato Pancakes
Alas, during my recent surgery, the doctors found I had a heart problem. (Why do they have to do all those tests anyway.) I got my cholesterol down by going almost vegan except for eggs (organic free range) and cheese as a garnish only.
My comfort food for years has been potato pancakes. In my Irish family, food = potatoes
My recipé was:
2 cups of left-over mashed potatoes,
chopped fresh parsley or dill
salt and fresh ground black pepper
1 egg
a little flour to thicken
lots of melted butter in the frying pan
Make pancakes 3″ in diameter and fry in the butter until golden brown.
Sometimes a little minced onion, or carmelized onions on the side.
Serve with either applesauce or sour cream.
Calories and cholesterol are massive.
Now, I eat boiled potatoes with a few drops of olive oil, salt, pepper and chopped fresh herbs. Not quite the same but healthier.
Man your pancakes sound really good…
I used to buy the big tub of KFC mashed potatos and freeze them… break them out of the (frozen container) and cut the cylindar of almost frozen potato into slices… Butter the ends and then fry…
I can tell i’m missing ingredients now =)
I ordered a pizza for delivery and then felt instantly guilty.
I drank my dinner tonight.
🙁
Brownies. I made brownies earlier this week and packed on the chocolate icing. They ended up being even too sweet for me, but I pulled them out tonite and had a couple. I could use the sugar rush.
Great. Now I’m hungry again.
I know your real weakness:
my favorite in the whole world…cheesecake with rasberry sause drizzled over it…mmmm. Let’s see…only thing sweet in the house right now is a fat free fudgecicle. Guess that will have to do.
You sure do. lol
helping out Boo in any way possible to help sustain this community is soul food to me.
<Jedi Master>
You will click on all the ads, right now.
</Jedi Master>
😀
Which ones does he make money off just the click versus buying a product?
Also freshly baked custard. Mom’s vegetable beef soup with every-damn-thing in it (no recipe–she just starts throwing stuff in the pot). And anything cooked over a campfire.
I hate to sound like a broken record but comfort food is chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate for me..anyone here surprised? And breads of all kinds.
Now if I was getting a little more serious and involved in cooking it would be homemade dumplings(made from potatoes)then fried up with sauerkraut in bacon drippings..but that’s an all day job…because when my sister and I do make this we make like a triple batch to make it worthwhile. And don’t even get me started on my grandmother’s recipe for kolacke’s. Basically another all day project.
And for eating out…The Olive Garden’s Alfredo Pizza.
French Toast ;o)
Thick sliced potato bread or oatnut natural grain bread soaked in eggs, half & half, and vanilla extract.
Fried till golden brown. Melted real salted butter poured over each one, then a half teaspoon of sugar on each one, then cinnamon sprinkled on each one. There is nothing better on the planet, not even close.
Other comfort food, mac $ sharp cheddar sheese with ketchup, eggs fried over easy on buttered toast open faced, grits or oatmeal with butter and sugar (yankee style). What else? Oh yeah….:o)….toast with butter and black raspberry preserves dipped in tea w/ milk & sugar.
Thank god or whoever for sugar and butter, right?
Peace
Man, I hope “racoons” is a pet name for some people. Because that sounds so good.
My comfort food. Hot chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven, with a cold glass ‘o milk.
Last night, on dKos, I read a diary that Gov. Blanco issued “shoot to kill” orders. The post itself expressed doubt about this. The post disappeared quickly.
Today, in this thread, I saw a similar quote. It disappeared before I could ask this question.
I assume that this story is just bullshit. Can anyone confirm that? Why are these diaries/comments disappearing? If anyone knows.
I posted this in wrong place.
Up here in Rochester, NY almost no one has heard or tried boiled peanuts, I have to go to the weekend Farmer’s Market to find the raw peanuts to make them, sold by people that have moved up from the South.
So how did a Northern boy that’s never lived down South learn about boiled peanuts? I lived in Hawaii for ten years, and they’re real big in Japan…
sorry to be a wet blanket but I just cannot bear seeing this thread about food when so many people in New Orleans are fighting for life.
Let’s talk about what the country needs – examples of leadership in this time – Here are my contributions:
–Eliot Spitzer is looking into a systemic emergency investigation of gas price gouging in NY (hopefully elsewhere) – investigation called for by state Republicans!
–Albany, USA’s most dysfunctional state capital, is moving to look into using the St. Lawrence Seaway as an alternate to crippled Gulf Coast gas and commodities shipping routes and may offer the Erie Canal as well – this may hopefully relieve gas prices in the Northeast
What are your state leaders doing (since we fucking have no federal government any more apparently?)
Do you have any recent pictures?
Are they still in charge of the household?
Sent the spouse out to play last night, because I was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted.
He brought home a banana and a Mickey Mouse cookie.
Every once in a while, he knows what I need… 🙂