Comfort food

Kraft macaroni with franks, bagels and cream cheese, cold cereal. What is your comfort food? I thought about this yesterday when trying to decide what to make for our Sunday lunch. This year our schedule actually allows us to eat close to noon so we aren’t trying to do with a mid-morning snack, a mid-afternoon lunch, and a mid-evening snack. And I came up with meat gravy and mashed potatoes with a side of canned peas. You can’t get much more “meat and potatoes” than this. Nothing fancy, nothing frilly. And I thought of half the recipes in the family cookbook which tend to be the same no-nonsense type of meals.

But that doesn’t mean they’re worth less. In fact, after a week of eating out because we’re on the road or just too busy to take the time to cook, eating one of these plain “meat and potatoes” meals feels like heaven.

During the recent holiday season at one of the pot-luck suppers we had at our house, a couple of people who had signed up to bring entrees didn’t show up. The “main dish” category was conspicuously sparse. Fortunately, we had a large bowl of leftover macaroni and tomato juice in the fridge which we heated up and placed out with all the more “dressy” dishes. And you know what? That was one of the more talked about dishes. People remarked how it had been years since they had macaroni, tomato juice, and hamburger “casserole”. Or said how much they enjoyed that dish as a child. We didn’t have any leftovers.