Some days when all worries rest on my doorstep, when missing the twins is sitting lumpishly in my belly, there is really only one thing to do: Make lasagna. I am not a domestically gifted sort. I don’t craft or sew or garden. But I do cook a mean lasagna.
And the smell of it, wafting through the house makes me take a deep breath, relax, and feel for a moment that all is well. The comfort I can create is protecting my loved ones from the loneliness of life without a good dinner.
When the twins walk through the door after the weekend at their dad’s house, and the beds are made, and the food is cooked, I feel that for a minute I’ve done everything I can to make them soak in the cozy love of home. And for an over-achieving constant worrier like me, this is the closest I get to maternal peace and serenity.
What is your favorite comfort food to cook or to eat?
I make killer mashed potatoes with heavy cream, white pepper, cream cheese AND sour cream. Also, Brownies with espresso, dark chocolate chips and pecans in the batter. Then add a layer of big puffed marshmellows (Put them on at the last 10 minutes of baking until they are golden). Let cool and frost.
Those are my big guns.
Breakfast cereal and black treacle.
I love a good lasagna too, but the Louisiana girl in me loves good etouffee, gumbo and jambalaya.
The overachieving constant worrier in me loves a good chocolate truffle any day.
With wine, of course.
As the Queen of Weight Watchers this has been hard. I think the thing I crave the MOST, and this is so dorky to admit, is boxed cereal. Oh. My. God. do I want to be comforted by some huge, aff bowls of breakfast cereal from a box. -SIGH-
Coffee.
Actually I just discovered a new comfort food that is deadlier than lasagna: mashed sweet potatoes with cracked black pepper, a little butter and….crumbled bits of really stinky blue cheese.
I have a family recipe for sweet and sour meatballs that is the ultimate in comfort food for me. I tend to only make it for special occasions but then in mass quantities. I’ve become the designated “maker of the meatballs” for all big family gatherings…So I guess it is everyone else’s comfort food too.
I love the smell of a roast chicken, or a roast beef…
I also love the smell of borscht…
These are the smells that are more powerful than any vanilla/lavander/ whatever elseis supposed to relaxthe soul incense…
I make these items whenever the dayh has been ‘rough’…
And in themorning the smell of banana nut bread…
or fired bacon and eggs… with fresh coffee…
Southern fried chicken. It’s kind of my “thing.” Although I may buy the pre-breaded Tyson stuff to pop into the oven on the normal week night, on special days when I need a fat fix I go all out with the brining, dredging, egging, flouring, and greasing!
I usually like mine with mashed potatoes and whatever canned veggie I can find in teh cabinets.
Cooking never comforts me. But I love it when someone else makes me…ummmm…well almost anything. Me not cooking and yet getting yummy food, that’s my comfort.
CrankMama,
Do share your lasagne recipe!
My comfort food of choice is probably pot roast. Living in Louisiana now, I have fewer occasions to need it than I did in the snowy winter days of Minnesota. I’ve become quite accustomed to the New Orleans Monday tradition of red beans and rice, though I’ve never made it myself–it’s too readily available to bother.
Mmmm. Lasagna! As for comfort food, that’s a tough one. I make some mean meatballs that the family loves, but for me, give me a big ol’ bowl of mashed potatoes!
Lasagna? Are you Garfield…
I don’t really have a confort food. I just like any food, that’s fried and comes in a bucket. Maybe that’s it…
A chicken with a nice dry-herb rub, roasted with baby yukon gold potatoes and baby carrots (and basted with sherry).
That or chiken marsala.
So funny, I was just thinking about this. But mine’s a comfort drink. Freezing cold milk, from a carton (all the better if you plucked it out of red plastic milk crate) and drunk through a white paper straw. Heaven!
I love love love cooking, when I’m not not feeling like absolute crap (thank you, twins).
My favorite, easiest, and yummiest dish (just ask my husband and my daughter), doesn’t really have a name. I call it: Chicken smothered in goat cheese sauce with brown rice cooked in sun dried tomato dressing. It’s heavenly to eat and super-easy.