Quarantine Comfort Food

[weinoo]

11 hours ago, MokaPot said:

Cookies look really good, @weinoo. How did they taste? Was the texture crispy on the bottom?

They're one of our favorites.  The texture is a little crispy on the bottom and around the edges, and a little chewy in the middle. 

 

While a little bit of a pain in the ass to make (with all the whisking and stirring), worth it in my opinion.

 

Kenji's is probably more annoying (and partially stolen from CI) to make; who wants to wait a day?!

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/12/the-food-lab-best-chocolate-chip-cookie-recipe.html

Edited May 2, 2020 by weinoo (log)

[gfweb]

16 hours ago, Anna N said:

I ate a whole sleeve of Ritz crackers. Just Ritz crackers. 

Who among us has not done this?

[Kim Shook]

On 5/2/2020 at 8:38 AM, gfweb said:

Who among us has not done this?

I have definitely done this.  And I have done it way before Quarantine.  

[suzilightning]

On 5/1/2020 at 4:37 PM, Anna N said:

I ate a whole sleeve of Ritz crackers. Just Ritz crackers. 

WOW!  I buy the small sleeves and can only manage 5 at a time.

[gulfporter]

May is our hottest month; hitting 90 daily, though very low humidity and lake breeze keeps it mostly tolerable (we have no a/c). 

 

Remember Tin Roof Sundaes (vanilla ice cream, Hershey's syrup, topped with salted nuts)? 

 

We made a Mexican version using spicy chili-lime salted nuts.  Bit of nostalgia from our childhoods coupled with our local flavors.  Hot Tin Roof Sundae!

Edited May 4, 2020 by gulfporter (log)

[heidih]

I will confess to a fondness for Krab salad.  So a big bowl of sweet kale and Krab in the fridge - eating a little bowlful whenever I feel like it - screw set mealtimes.  Discovered that the dead built-in microwave makes a great breadbox for my no-knead (which must be craggily cut and crisped in the toaster oven

[JeanneCake]

On 5/1/2020 at 4:37 PM, Anna N said:

I ate a whole sleeve of Ritz crackers. Just Ritz crackers. 

 

Tonight, I am eating a whole sleeve of Ritz crackers myself.  Along with a runny Danish brie and some raspberry pepper jelly.  Thanks Anna!

 

It was a miserable trip to Restaurant Depot this afternoon and I am a little grumpy and hungry.  Restaurant Depot was cleaned out of a lot of stuff but I did  manage to get two tubes f 90% ground beef that I'm going to vacuum pack tomorrow, and a huge package of hot dogs because the kid wanted hot dogs   5# of hot dogs! ugh.  They had no other beef, no pork, no lamb, no veal, no bacon, very little chicken (and rude shoppers had opened the few cases remaining and left the plastic bags wide open, exposing the meat.  🤬)

 

I feel better now that the crackers and cheese are polished off 😉

[Amy D.]

Aside from the copious amounts of cakes and other home baked sweets, our family of four are consuming lots of buttered toast, eggs and milk and have been all lockdown. Toast has always been my comfort food, but my 8-year-old daughter has always hated it (because of the crumbs) and yet has found a new love for toast in the last few weeks.

[Kim Shook]

4 hours ago, Amy D. said:

Aside from the copious amounts of cakes and other home baked sweets, our family of four are consuming lots of buttered toast, eggs and milk and have been all lockdown. Toast has always been my comfort food, but my 8-year-old daughter has always hated it (because of the crumbs) and yet has found a new love for toast in the last few weeks.

Toast. Hot, buttered toast.  If I didn’t have a modicum of self control, I could eat a loaf a day.  

[Miriravan]

I have so. much. ice. cream. in my freezer.  So much.  And more cheese in my refrigerator than is seemly for a single person. 

And while I don't know that it fits the 'comfort food' definition in the sense that's meant here, I have a few items that I am weirdly anxiety-stricken if I run out of:  onions, canned tomatoes, butter, dill pickles, cottage cheese.  It's like a switch flips if I don't have those things in my pantry/refrigerator, whether I have any actual current need or plan for them or not. In general, I make sure I don't run out, though the onion thing sometimes is complicated by the weird phenomenon of onions that seem fine on the outside, but then have one or more rotten layers when cut into.   

 

But all is well now, as one of my local bakery/cafes is delivering some grocery/pantry items as well as (delicious) prepared food, and they were happy to send me some onions.

[heidih]

1 hour ago, Miriravan said:

And while I don't know that it fits the 'comfort food' definition in the sense that's meant here, I have a few items that I am weirdly anxiety-stricken if I run out of:  onions, canned tomatoes, butter, dill pickles, cottage cheese.  It's like a switch flips if I don't have those things in my pantry/refrigerator, whether I have any actual current need or plan for them or not.

 

 

I think you are in kindred company here. Even before CV19 it has been a thing with many. On the onions - stepmother brought home a totally sprouted red onion. What?!?  I just cut into it - like a microcosm of baby onion within the outer layer. Oh well it will flavor the lentils though I somehow got cumin powder embedded in my skin. "no touching face, no touching face..."

[fondue]

Our family has a new favorite: Sub a large can of thinly-sliced pears for pineapple rings, sub almond flavoring for vanilla, and add a pinch of nutmeg for the loss of marashino cherries - and this is a damn fine upside-down cake. 

  Single serving size, now matter how big or small your family!  😏

[kayb]

Sometimes, when the world's been upside down just a little too long, when the tires for your cat didn't come in and you're without a car til Monday, never mind there's nowhere to go...

 

You have to revert to trailer park comfort food.

 

Disclaimer: I never lived in a trailer park, likely because my grandmother was so deathly afraid of storms she insisted on a stick-built house instead of "one of them tin cans," but I had a gracious plenty of kinfolk and friends who did and spent a lot of time in them.

 

I give you...

 

Hawaiian meatballs!

 

This is about as poor white folks as it gets. And I dearly love them. Basic meatballs (I add a quarter teaspoon or so of ginger). Pineapple chunks.  Sauce is pineapple juice, water, vinegar, brown sugar, soy sauce. Cornstarch to thicken. 

Edited May 9, 2020 by kayb (log)

[robirdstx]

3 hours ago, kayb said:

You have to revert to trailer park comfort food...

 

...This is about as poor white folks as it gets.

 

 

Excuse me?

 

Edited May 10, 2020 by robirdstx (log)

[heidih]

10 minutes ago, robirdstx said:

 

Excuse me?

 

Same reaction It was buffet or cocktail party food in the 70's at some pretty nice houses.

[kayb]

It was what passed for "fancy food" amongst the lower middle class community in which I grew up. And it's the food of that period that I'm gravitating back to these days. Not of a great deal of culinary interest, granted, but it's familiar and ... comforting, in a time when I want/need comforting.

 

 

 

Edited May 10, 2020 by kayb (log)

[suzilightning]

11 hours ago, kayb said:

It was what passed for "fancy food" amongst the lower middle class community in which I grew up. And it's the food of that period that I'm gravitating back to these days. Not of a great deal of culinary interest, granted, but it's familiar and ... comforting, in a time when I want/need comforting.

 

 

 

 

That's fancy pants food, woman.

As someone who DID live in a trailer park in Hooks, TX  may I remind you about beanie weenies?  Weenies in a combination of grape jelly and chili sauce? 

[heidih]

36 minutes ago, suzilightning said:

That's fancy pants food, woman.

As someone who DID live in a trailer park in Hooks, TX  may I remind you about beanie weenies?  Weenies in a combination of grape jelly and chili sauce? 

 

If ya wanta go fancier you use meatballs and supply fancy pants frilly toothpicks. Made in crock pot set on buffet table. 

[suzilightning]

21 minutes ago, heidih said:

 

If ya wanta go fancier you use meatballs and supply fancy pants frilly toothpicks. Made in crock pot set on buffet table. 

Oh, yeah.  First time I had that was when the staff at Texarkana Public Library threw me a goodbye party when we moved north.  And those meatballs were frozen.

I have an old friend who would not make the weenies that way but with ketchup and Jim Beam.

[Katie Meadow]

The closest I ever got to grape jelly in my childhood was Manischewitz wine. Then eventually it cropped up in diners on road trips. The only time I ever heard of grape jelly being associated with hot dogs was ten minutes ago, on this thread. It must be real, since no one could make that up.

[kayb]

Oh, Lord, yes. Grape jelly and barbecue sauce. Hot dogs cut into small chunks. If you were REALLY fancy, you used the little cocktail sausages, or, as noted above, frozen meatballs. Those, and RoTel dip, were the mainstays of many a party.

 

Confession. I had half a pack of cocktail sausages left after making pigs in blankets the other morning for breakfast. I bought grape jelly with the intention of doing exactly this with the remainder of the package. But I made more pigs in blankets instead.

 

Grape jelly, however, is my preferred jelly for PB&J.

[JeanneCake]

I have a vague childhood memory of my parents hosting parties where grape jelly and meatballs made an appearance but I cannot remember anything else other than the meatballs were sweet, and I got to eat them with toothpicks.  Oh and my  mother making parfaits - with what I'm pretty sure was canned cherry pie filling and probably vanilla pudding from a mix.  My paternal grandmother was a phenomenal cook and she taught my mother while we lived in a two family  house. 

 

Now I kind of want the grape jelly meatballs....alas I have no grape jelly, no meatballs and no recipe ....

 

ETA that my grandmother did not teach my mother how to make grape jelly meatballs.  That my mother got out of a magazine I'm sure! LOL 

Edited May 10, 2020 by JeanneCake (log)

[TdeV]

@JeanneCake.

When I was a newly minted independent, I was invited to dinner and fed Sweet and Sour Meatballs. I was fascinated by the idea that one could take a jar of jelly and a jar of chili sauce and make something totally different. So here it is:

Sweet and Sour Meatballs by Martina Klees from St. Catharine's.pdf

[BeeZee]

Cinnamon graham crackers. I haven't had them in a really long time, but they are so comforting...simple, reminds me of after school snacking. Just sweet enough.