I read an article today that featured Nigella Lawson going through her list of favorite comfort foods. Too many desserts on her list, but I do agree with fish fingers (not as a sandwich, though), and she had lasagne on the list. Okay, my version of fish fingers is more freshly battered and fried fish, than that breaded frozen junk you bake, but anyway. Tonight, I’m making a lasagne of sorts, but since we’re up to our eyeballs in yellow squash from our garden, I’ll be using slices of that instead of pasta. Most intriguing to me was what she didn’t have on her list, that I would have included on mine.
- mashed potatoes
- mac & cheese (made from scratch — not the boxed garbage)
- pot pie — chicken, turkey, or ham
- chicken divan
- moussaka
- tetrazzini
- egg-based things that are easy to make (quiche, omelettes, scrambled eggs, casseroles with beaten eggs that puff when baked) These are all good for breakfast, lunch, or supper.
- tuna noodle casserole
- grilled cheese sandwiches
No desserts are on my list. I almost never eat dessert unless it comes with a prix fixe restaurant dinner, and even then, I usually take it home for later, because by then I’m too full to eat another bite of anything. Dessert is a treat, not comfort food, in my book. On a steamy hot 100F+ day, though, a root beer float is glorious.
To me, comfort food is something that reminds me of the sort of things my mom might make for dinner when I was a kid, that was probably horrible for us, health-wise, but tasted creamy-gooey, yummy, and didn’t require cutting with a knife to eat. My mom was a lousy cook, but it’s hard to screw up a casserole. It’s something that warms a tummy on a Saturday evening, after hours of playing a pickup game of hockey on a frozen pond with the neighborhood kids.
There are morbidly obese people who are addicted to food the way some people are addicted to drugs, and think all food provides “comfort,” but that’s not what I’m talking about. The people featured on cable TV show like “My 600 lb. Life,” “1000 lb. Sisters,” and “One Ton Family” would consider a full English breakfast an amuse-bouche. Watching shows like that late at night when I’m still too awake to go to bed is a real eye opener as to how much food some people really eat. For them, it’s emotional eating that has nothing to do with being hungry, or even snacking while bored.
Day-um. I couldn’t eat in a week what they eat in a day. A full English breakfast would last me all day, assuming I could eat it all in one sitting, which is questionable, and I wouldn’t want lunch or supper. I might even put off my next meal until brunch the following day.
Well, I’ve assembled my “squash-agne,” and it’s ready to pop in the oven an oven ahead of when we want supper, to give it time to bake, then set up while it cools a bit. It’ll be better tomorrow than tonight. Like a batch of chili, it always is. The tomato sauce is a homemade marinara from tomatoes we canned last summer, with fresh basil and oregano from this summer’s herb garden, and some added maitake mushrooms my brother-in-law gave us that he collected and dried. It should be good.
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