Comfort Food!!!

[Hue]

Conversation started on another board about, comfort foods!!!
Was wondering what are remembered as comfort foods.?

For me things like, green beans,potatoes and smoked neck, corned beef , potatoes and cabbage...
What is your "I Remember Mama" comfort food???

[PotatoHouse]

Potato Soup
Various breakfast gravies (Sausage gravy, bacon gravy, SOS (creamed chipped beef version and hamburger version))
Macaroni and tomatoes
Spaghetti
Macaroni and Cheese (the blue box)
Hot Beef Sandwiches (made with Leo Buddig sandwich meat cooked in a bullion and onion gravy and served over Fritos atop a sliced sandwich sub roll and topped with shredded lettuce. YUUMMMYYY!!)

[Perilagu Khan]

Wow. That sandwich sounds bizarre!

[sandylc]

I thing that's Carl Buddig pseudo-meat. Everyone in my family but me ate that.

[PotatoHouse]

That's it. I actually have some in my fridge but they quit putting the first name on it, now it's just Buddig. I keep it around just for out of hand snacking.

[danbuter]

Roast beef, mashed potatoes, and corn. Best meal ever!

[suzigirl]

Something about a slow foods say comfort for me. Corned beef and cabbage, split pea soup, red beans and rice, smothered green beans, smothered pork chops, Collard greens, black eyed peas. Yes I am southern.

[RUK]

Potato dumplings with either Pot Roast or a nicely spiced Goulash.

[Querencia]

When this question was asked on a genealogy board a few years ago people from certain sections of the South remembered "Chocolate Gravy" made with cocoa and flour and sugar and served hot over biscuits. Does this ring a bell with anyone?

[pine time]

Wow, that's a new one to this Kentucky-bred girl. Dad's family was from TN, and I never heard him mention it either. Maybe further south?

[Perilagu Khan]

Yeah. Like South America.

[suzigirl]

I just saw that on Trisha Year woods show. Never heard of it before. The sweet salty thing sounds good.

[PotatoHouse]

My Jr. high girlfriend's mom made it. It was good.

[sandylc]

I've read about chocolate gravy, but I can't remember where - !

[TheHuntress]

Egg and chips! My mother grew up in Wales and emigrated to Australia with my father in their mid twenties. When it was just my mother and myself at home she would cook egg and chips for us. I would peel the potatoes and cut them into chunky chips and mum would do the rest. Egg was always fried with a runny yolk to dip the chips into - which somehow she was a master of (otherwise not being a great cook), having been taught by her own grandfather, who used to keep a tiny stove in his shed to fry hot chips. Mmmm, egg and chips for dinner, methinks.

[sisterfunkhaus]

Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and Glory canned green beans, or homemade stewed green beans. Homemade mac and cheese with Ritz cracker and butter crumb topping, homemade biscuits and sausage gravy, black eyed pea cakes with wilted greens and tomato gravy, and chicken and dumplings.

[jmcarthur8]

My mother's stuffed cabbage with mashed potatoes.

My father's meatloaf with my macaroni and cheese.

[huiray]

I don't have any foods that I would specifically classify as "I Remember Mama" comfort food.

However, some foods that would fit the description of "Confort Food" for me would be:
• Jook (rice congee), with fixings/complements varying according to the moment;
• Harm Choy Tong (pickled sour mustard soup, with either pork or chicken as the meat, always bone-on);
• Linguine alle vongole;
• Beef, carrot, onion stew;
• Tofu prepared almost any way;
• Cantonese-style pan-fried noodles (preferably "Sang Mein" or "Hor Fun") with a nice meat & veggie sauce;
• Chicken Noodle Soup (including the classic Campbell's);
etc etc etc.

[cacruden]

Curry - pretty well any curry

Spagetti with Meat and Vegetable sauce

Chicken and Rice soup

(All homemade - no Cambell's :o)

[Perilagu Khan]

Campbell's Soup (Chicken Noodle, Chicken with Stars, Chicken and Rice) with bologna and cheese sandwiches. A lunch time staple in my elementary school years.

[wandajune6]

Tuna noodle casserole

Matzo ball soup

Cabbage soup

Spaghetti with meat sauce scooped up with homemade garlic bread

[lcool]

brisket braised on a bed of whole onions
scalloped potatoes
omelets
cheesy,eggy,creamy list of things

[Perilagu Khan]

Chicks and Dumps

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Enchiladas Suizas

My mom's Beef Stew

Tacos

Cream of Potato Soup

[sisterfunkhaus]

Now I have to make chicken and dumplings for dinner.

[Perilagu Khan]

I'm jonesing for 'em myself. But then I usually am. ;)

[Bacardi1]

Here's another "comfort food" from the days when I was a little sprout - commercial fish sticks & Kraft mac & cheese.

My dad worked in Manhattan & had a LONG daily commute (like at least 2 hours each way), so sometimes mom would be pressed into feeding us kids early if dad was going to be home really late. In addition, dad's company paid, like, every 5 weeks, & even though mom was a top-notch cook, one could tell when paycheck time was almost there, because meals sort of morphed from steaks, etc., to more economical fare until the "big day".

But we really LOVED those fish sticks & mac & cheese!! To us it was a treat since normally mom made more convoluted (but delicious) meals. Loved it so much, that both my brother & I still make it sometimes to this day.

I change it a little. While I still buy either Gorton's or Mrs. Paul's sticks, sometimes I'll substitute Velveeta shells for the Kraft, & I almost always add fresh broccoli florets to the mac & cheese as a minor bow to a little healthiness - lol.

[fldhkybnva]

OMG! You brought back the memories for me. I totally forgot how much I used to love the commercial fish sticks!

[KSlink]

We thought it was such a great treat when we'd get the Kraft dinner that used the canned cheese sauce instead of the powdered packet (do they still make that?) and it was always breakfast sausage links and applesauce on the side.....which I eventually grew to love with some ketchup on the mac...weird kid........

[Vidute]

Fish stick sandwiches on buttered white bread with ketchup. mmmmmmmmmm.....been years since I've had that. Have to place it on my shopping list.

[fldhkybnva]

My grandmother's macaroni and cheese.

[Bacardi1]

Pot Roast with GingerSnap Gravy, Czech bread dumplings; Poached Chicken in Sour Cream Dill Gravy, Czech bread dumplings; Roast Duck, gravy, Czech Bread Dumplings; Fresh Roast Loin of Pork, Czech bread dumplings.

See some continuity here? :)

[sandylc]

Meat, starch, fat. Sounds lovely.

[sunflwrsdh]

Meat loaf and baked potatoes, green beans and chocolate pudding for dessert.

That was my favorite meal that my mom made. And she was not a great cook, but I still like that combination, because it evokes pleasant childhood food memories.

Other favorite comfort foods ( not my mom's, but my own favorites, I started cooking when I was 9):
Macaroni and cheese
Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich
Chicken and dumplings

[pine time]

Love your choices, too, but that tomato soup (had to be Campbell's) and grilled cheese had the added bonus of a handful of Fritos in the soup.

[fldhkybnva]

Grilled cheese always with ketchup - childhood favorite! Well, that's a lie, I routinely fire up the cast iron for a late night grilled cheese with ketchup to this day.

[sandylc]

Chicken and noodles or beef and noodles.

[nofunlatte]

Well, if this is "I Remember Mama" comfort food, it would be LIbbyland Dinners, Lemon Whip-n-Chill, and Beef-a-Roni (which I preferred to Spaghettios). My Mana doesn't like to cook, though she makes a wonderful apple cake!

[sisterfunkhaus]

I still eat beefaroni topped with cheese. It's one of my gulity pleasure foods.

[weezieduzzit]

My paternal Grandmothers chicken and dumplings
My Dad's fried chicken
My Mom's coq au vin

[eclecticsynergy]

Me too, K.Slink- mashed potatoes & good gravy of any sort, spoon me out a nice bowlful and stand back!

Chicken & dumplings
Homemade mac & cheese
Cornbread stuffing with roast turkey or roast chicken or roast duck or roast beef or roast pork or what the heck, just by itself.

A nice brunch for dinner: French toast (real maple syrup of course), coupla scrambled eggs, crisp bacon, nice crusty corned beef hash, home fries, toast with butter & good European jam, Ceylon tea with cream and sugar... And a new set of arteries, please.

[KSlink]

I can't even duplicate, let alone top, her fried chicken. It's been many years now, maybe I should give it another shot.....

[pine time]

From KY, the Land of Biscuits and Gravy. While I've mastered most of Mom's dishes (including her cooked-to-death-and-back green beans), I've never replicated her biscuits and gravy. Have tried every biscuit recipe known to southern-kind, but no luck. Of course, she didn't measure a thing or write down her method, either. Watched her making them dozens of times, but no luck.

[1POINT21GW]

Biscuits and gravy are one of my very favorite foods. I'm curious, what seems to be allusive about your mom's?

[sandylc]

Yeah, what's different about hers? Did she learn it in KY? I do my grandmother's from very close to KY. I do remember those terrible green beans - I have never mastered those because I have never tried to!

[pine time]

LOL, Sandylc, about "terrible green beans,"--they're gourmet-level "terrible," but "comfort food" nirvana!
Mom was from the hills of Tennessee, so not sure if her method was from her Mom or evolved over time. Maybe it's just the nostalgia of hers, but seems they had a tiny bit of crunch in the crust, then pillow-soft innards. I've done baking powder, cat's head, yeast-based (she never used yeast in her life), buttermilk, ad infinitum. If anyone wants to link me to a heavenly biscuit, I'll certainly give it a go. Just had a mega-southern-road trip and bought White Lily flour (which she never used), so that's my next trial.

[sandylc]

I'd love to do a southern road trip! That is some GORGEOUS country - sort of a secret paradise.

Her flour was likely pretty soft in that region, so the White Lily might get you where you want to go. Did she use lard, maybe?

EDIT: Oh, I can tell you that having used a wood cookstove for much of her life, my grandmother saw little sense in that dial on her stove, and baked everything at maximum temp - just turn it on was her philosophy. So temperature might play an unusual role here, as well.

[nomadchowwoman]

Not sure these will replicate your mom's. I'm not much of a biscuit maker myself (and my own mother's were leaden), but I occasionally try my hand ay making biscuits b/c my husband loves them. The best I have ever made, by far, were Shirley Corriher's "Touch of Grace" biscuits.

http://www.food52.com/blog/2819_shirl...

I recently bought Nathalie Dupree's "Southern Biscuits." I'll look through to see if I can find a recipe that might fit your description and post if I can find something.

[pine time]

Gracias to you both! Hmmm, Shirley Corriher's look like Mom's did--they weren't picture-perfect, but tasted exquisite. And Sandylc, I'll report back on the White Lily experiment. Mom grew up eating food from a wood stove, but we had gas & electric by my day! She used plain old Crisco (altho' did paint the tops of her biscuits w/ melted bacon fat).

[sandylc]

Don't know if you've seen this thread:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/839706

[KSlink]

7 bone chuck steak braised with potatoes, carrots, and onions.....or fried chicken with creamy gravy and mashed potatoes (shocker, huh?......)