Comfort Food

It's cold, gray, blustery, and threatening to snow. All I can think of this minute is hot mashed potatoes made light and creamy but fluffy, with lots of salt and butter. It's no wonder... now that it has turned into my least favorite season and the 1/2 mile walk to the grocery store is a necessity and not a pleasure, all I can think of is comfort food. My comfort foods are those that I grew up with, and although as a kid some were not great meals, I want them now more than ever. A while ago I made tuna noodle casserole, which was a Friday classic at our house. I put in more milk than I remember my mom doing and added chopped roasted red peppers and it was heavenly. Another Friday favorite was baked macaroni and cheese, which has been haunting me recently. Now this is not the Kraft variety that we begged for as kids, this is my mom's homemade version. It involved elbows, cheddar cheese (the kind that doesn't melt too good), milk, and a can of stewed tomatoes thrown in for good measure. As kids we hated it, but in my day if you didn't eat what was put in front of you, you didn't eat anything. Now, however I want to make that macaroni and cheese with stewed tomatoes, but instead of just adding lumps of cheese and pouring in the milk before baking, I think the production of a good Mornay sauce mixed into the elbows with the addition of drained chopped stewed tomatoes would be delicious. There is no law that says you can't improve your comfort food, but it should also maintain a certain familiarity to the foods of your past. For instance, steak and potatoes are not comfort foods for me, as we rarely ate that growing up. Fish can only be on the list if it is breaded and fried, with lots of tartar sauce on the side. Chili con carne is high on the list, as is Spanish rice (which in our house was chili con carne made with rice, and the beans omitted.) Chicken is not a comfort food, as we only ate legs and thighs back in the day before Perdue, and there was always some weird grisly thing hanging off the meat...eww. But the number one spot for the best comfort food goes to ... rigatoni and meat sauce. When I was a kids we only had spaghetti with meat sauce, and although my mom's version was terrific, if one of my sisters or brother even hinted at the word worm, I would lose my appetite. Since they were good sports and knew how much I loved to eat, that rarely happened, but now as the cook of my own comfort food I don't take chances.