daily discussion post: comfort food

[dine]

I had a bad couple of weeks lately (things just finally got to me, and I was depressed and out of can) though happily things have brightened for me. when in the doldrums, I found myself frequently fixing things to eat that were "comfort foods" from childhood - hot cocoa, clam chowder, mashed potatoes, toast with lots of butter & marmalade or jam.

what about you? what are the things that a parent or loved relative/neighbor made that was comfort food for you? do you still eat it, and can it taste as good when you prepare it yourself? for example, there's no way I can make gravy half as good as my mom's was - but I still love mashed potatoes with butter & gravy (even if it's inferior to my memories).

Comments

[tielan]

Lasagne, pizza, spaghetti bolognaise, stewed pork, chicken rice. And while I can make these things myself now, they're missing...something. It might just be the knowledge that someone else made this for me with love.

Also: deep friend sesame balls (my grandmother), my stepdad's baked potatoes, as well as his 'oh, well, whatever' bake in which he disposed of various jars of jam and fruit and spice by mixing and matching together and then roasting it all into a sticky, meaty morass of deliciousness. Still don't know how he did that.

I'm sure that my mother's cheesecakes were so much tastier than mine, and her pavlovas always managed to have both crunch and chew to them.

Right, well, now I'm starving. I'd better heat up dinner.

[dine]

mmm, chicken rice! I'd forgotten how good & comforting that can be - now I want some *g*

I think you're right, that love is indeed the secret ingredient that makes things taste better somehow

I hope your dinner was tasty & filling

Bad Gateway ate my original reply!

[olivermoss]

Now that I am doing more scratch cooking, I've been making chicken marinated in soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and garlic. That was the marinade that was all the craze with home cooks at the start of the fusion food trend. The smell of it, even before I cook it, is so familiar and weirdly nostalgic.

My favorite comfort food I can't have anymore because I can't have dairy. I used to take campbell's tomato soup, made it with milk instead of water, plate it up, add in three very thin strips of cheddar cheese do it would melt in and add flavor. I'd eat it with cheez-its and a glass of diet coke with lemon and 3 cubes of ice. That was my favorite meal. I'd love to have it again someday.

Re: Bad Gateway ate my original reply!

[tielan]

Oh man, you've reminded me. My mother would do the 'add milk instead of water' thing with Campbell's soup, but with cream of chicken rather than tomato.

I had Cream of Chicken years later as an adult and it was...not at all what I remembered. Maybe they changed the recipe, or maybe my tastes had changed, but it was much saltier and not as tasty...

Hm. I might go look up a cream of chicken soup recipe now. Winter is coming...

Re: Bad Gateway ate my original reply!

[olivermoss]

Maybe I'd also find that the tomato soup tastes too salty now. My mom used an ungodly amount of salt in everything. Once I moved out, I didn't add salt to anything for years just to adjust my taste buds to normal.

Making soup sounds good :)

Re: Bad Gateway ate my original reply!

[dine]

I find most canned soups awfully salty nowadays as well. I had to cut back on sodium and stopped adding it to food altogether, and I still find some stuff oversalted

soup does sound good- maybe I'll make some for lunch tomorrow, when it's supposed to be significantly cooler

Re: Bad Gateway ate my original reply!

[dine]

that marinade sounds terrific

sorry you can no longer have your fave comfort food - it's sad when making your mouth and emotions happy will mean making your system v.v. unhappy

Re: Bad Gateway ate my original reply!

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it's why I keep going back to drinking diet coke right when I think I'm done forever with it. It's the one childhood thing I can still have.

[azurelunatic]

Mama's beef stew was a favorite. No flour, cooked long enough that the potatoes have started to thicken the liquid.

I don't often make it, but some canned beef stew is close enough.


I sometimes used to make breaded ramen, but I haven't made it in years. It involves a brick of ramen that's half soft and half crunchy, oil, flour, and at least half an extra seasoning packet.

[dine]

potatoes do a great job thickening dishes - that stew sounds delicious

I'm old and ramen wasn't a thing until I was in my 20s - don't know if my mom ever even looked at it on the shelf, but it was a staple of poor starving me once I was on my own

[shadowhive]

I can relate to that, the last few weeks have been pretty bad for me too. I’m glad things are getting brighter for you though

It’s strange, I don’t remember what my childhood comfort food was. I’m not sure I had one, I’m still not sure if I have one now

[dine]

thank you - I hope life improves for you soon as well

[annofowlshire]

My mother is Korean who immigrated to the US, and while she left when I was young, apparently my comfort food tastes were already set by then. She used to make these sort of inexpensive Korean/American mash-ups:

Soy sauce rice—literally soy sauce and rice, usually with butter, sesame seeds, and a sliced hot dog. I still make this sometimes, usually with sesame oil instead of butter, and frankfurters or bacon or maybe an egg. (I live in the UK now, where hot dogs as we think of them in the US aren’t really a thing.)

Cheap ramen—Think of the ramens that go on sale 10 for $1. My mother would usually stir in an egg at the end of the cooking. Ramen isn’t as cheap on this side of the pond, but these days I add sesame oil, sesame seeds, wakame (dried seaweed) and sliced veg. I used to add an egg, but my son is allergic to eggs and often wants to share with me so I skip that.

[tielan]

Your mother's ramen sounds like my (Chinese-immigrated-to-Australia) mum's "instant noodles": ramen noodles (she called them 'instant noodles', and I think the name for them over here is "2-minute noodles"), matchsticks of SPAM(tm), and a few lettuce leaves.

[annofowlshire]

My mother moved to Hawaii after my parents split, so that’s when SPAM became more of a staple, at least when I was visiting her. She ran a corner shop in Honolulu for 20-something years and fed the neighbourhood their breakfast with her trays upon trays of SPAM musubi—she’d be sold out by 9AM XD

In the US, we had Top Ramen and another brand name that now escapes me, which is probably why she called it ramen rather than by a Korean equivalent.

[dine]

I think we definitely develop preferences as small children, and it's not too surprising that yours stuck

growing up in the 60s & 70s, rice was a side dish when you went out for Chinese, and I don't think mom ever did anything 'fancy' with it. and ramen wasn't even a thing back then, though your version sounds good

[liseuse]

Definitely my mother's macaroni cheese. Now, I can, and do, make macaroni cheese, and it's exactly the same as how she used to make it because she taught me to make it, but it's not quite the same. I mean, it is in all ways identical, but it's just got that missing element of someone making it for you to cheer you up.

[dine]

yeah, that missing ingredient is probably love - funny how much of a difference that makes!

[aome]

Hot dogs (no bun, just steamed or sliced and sauted) and rice. My dad was a very (VERY) simple cook. When I visited him as a kid, this was often a lunch or dinner, and I loved it.

Although it doesn't have a particular emotional connotation like hot dogs and rice, when I'm stressed: bring on the carbs. Bread - especially fresh bread - or pasta. And chocolate.

I also love PB&J on toast, or PB & honey on toast or a grilled cheese sandwich.

[ninetydegrees]

"when I'm stressed: bring on the carbs."

Hear, hear.

[dine]

little kids are big fans of simple - your dad's dinner sounds just right for past!me (and the little kids I know now)

bring on the carbs has got to be a rule of life for me - when I look at my own list above, they're definitely included

[ninetydegrees]

Pasta, grated cheese and ham. Roast beef and mashed potatoes. Buttered bread with chocolate (or a variant with sliced apples and cinnamon). Warm milk with a pinch of sugar. It still eat/drink all of these. I can't remember them tasting better as a child. We have more choices and better ingredients now. And I think I remember more the situation than the taste. (Also I can't really remember a time when I wasn't in the kitchen when something was being cooked, helping, chatting or asking questions about how something was made; it was like we all made the food).

Hot cocoa and some soups have recently been added to the list. They were not really comfort foods as a child.

[dine]

those are delicious options! there's a lot of truth that the situation was as or more important than the actual food - that makes so much sense

[magnetic_pole]

Fun question! For me, anything that came out of a crock pot, which was my mother's cooking tool of choice. We used to have something she called Swiss steak" (oh, look, the "Swiss" actually means something--I did not know that) with bell peppers. So delicious.

And as for non-home-home-cooked food, as someone who grew up in Southern California? Really good, really fresh donuts. Nothing compares. M.

ETA: Sorry to hear you've had a hard couple of weeks, D.

[dine]

thanks! my mom had a crock pot, but never grew to rely on it, and I can't remember much she made with it - except some soups occasionally.

mmm, Swiss steak - that brings back a lot of memories. ours wasn't tomato-based, but used cream of mushroom soup as a sauce when baking. but I recall the weird meat tenderizer hammer (it was a thrill when I was allowed to use it to beat the tough meat into submission) and the orange enamel dutch oven mom always used for it (in fact, I don't really recall that pan used for anything else)

thank you; I'm fairly introverted normally, so the first seven weeks or so didn't go so badly, and at east I didn't have to worry about my paycheck. but then I think I hit a wall or something, and the lack of physical human interaction (and boredom) got to me. happily that's mostly lifted some - I still miss 'normal' but have made it to a place where I'm not as dragged down

[rhi]

Cinnamon toast, grilled cheese and ham, Mom would occasionally make cheese souffle and I loved it. I've learned GF versions of all of it, but yeah, I miss wheat something fierce some days.

[dine]

those all sound like comfort to me! I can't imagine how hard it must be to try to adapt familiar dishes/favourites, because wheat really is a major ingredient in so many foods

[rosefox]

My grandparents' housekeeper, Clara, made roast beef with potatoes roasted in the drippings, and I will never eat or make anything half as good. My mother has been trying to recreate that recipe for at least 50 years.

[dine]

oh, yum! too bad Clara didn't share her recipe with anyone; I'm sorry that your mom hasn't managed to recreate it, because wow does that sound delicious