It's a fairly new term, and refers to the kind of old family staples your mother (or perhaps grandmother) used to make when you were growing up, but which many families don't eat any more, due to growing affluence and declining interest/skill in cooking. Meat loaf and mashed motatoes, shepherd's pie, pot pie, etc. Most of the posters here still make those dishes because they enjoy cooking but the wider community has somewhat lost that link. So they get all nostalgic about those foods. It doesn't bother me- not every meal has to be haute cuisine :-)

I don't mind the term at all..It means a hug..it means warm comforting foods..familar or not...it's whatever foods make you feel all homey, comfy and satisfied.

I've been bit by that nasty flu bug today and I WANT my moms orange fluffy jello salad NOW! It will bring me great comfort.

The term comfort food has been around here for at least 30 years....maybe longer.
You know the "food people" have to find something to focua on....and they all seem to focus at once on the same things...or else some feel out of it.
A couple of years back if was "Bistro food"....and a few years before that "Spa Food"...so now it's comfort food!...It's whatever buzz word they seem to choose at the moment.
Linda C

minsue..I was thinking along the same lines..'scept what I want is my mom's dark chocolate orange cake with Hershey's Light Cocoa Frosting..
So I made a Gluten Free Chocolate Cake before dinner..The kids like it more than I do..Gotta work on it! LOL
I need to perfect it..I want to suprise her with a GF version of her cake..

Aww Terri, that's so sweet. Yes that stupid orange fluffy jello has been a comfort food for me since I was a kid. I had to learn to make it myself when I grew up and got married. I think comfort food is anything that we loved as a kid and brings back good memories. All of my cousins and I have spent alot time trying to perfect Gramma's chicken. When Gramma died one cousin even begged for the pan that Gramma always cooked it in thinking that that's the missing ingredient. I hope that someday my kids will have a favorite comfort food that came from my cooking.

Terri, would you mind posting the Dark Orange Cake recipe? I've never made one nor tasted an Orange Cake before and I'd like to try it. Also the frosting recipe, if it's not too much trouble.

What was the problem with the gluten free cake? Maybe we can suggest something?

Michelle

Comfort food is just that....comforting, So is it any surprise that people are needing it right now? We are in a war, terrorism is still out there and our economy is in deep trouble. Unemployment is high, gas is high and in most areas real estate is still heading down with no real upturn in site.... Yes, I read the newspaper today. :-((
There's no good news in Michigan these days..

Nancy

My version of comfort food is HOMEMADE CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP!

Nancy is right, plus add the stress of working and running a household, dealing with sick kids or parents, the holidays, and all we foodies want to do is eat something that reminds us of easier days, when Mom made it all better with a kiss and something yummy to eat. It is the meal that relaxes you.

Mine: a big bowl of pasta with bolgnese. Followed by chocolate anything. Now that will be dinner on Saturday, as we have an ice storm coming in.

Oh, my, I didn't mean to step on anyone's comfort foods! I've been sick for a week, and I guess I was just in a bad mood. I certainly don't need everything to be haute cuisine, I just thought that the t.v. shows were over doing it a bit.

I truly don't have any foods from my childhood that I could call "comfort food" since my mother's idea of cooking was opening bags of frozen veggies and just heating them up, and cooking whatever meat she cooked in a forgetable way. She just didn't like to cook. My grandmother was no better. Plus, the things I have fond memories of eating (Chicken and rice, for instance) I don't eat any more because they involve eating meat, which I don't do any more. Oh, well. maybe I'm being a curmudgeon because I can't think any comfort foods that apply to my upbringing. But I also think its a bit of a gimmick with the cooking shows, too.

Sally

I don't know if it's a gimmick on the cooking shows so much as just another (maybe overdone) topic. I guess it's hard to come up with stuff to cook on TV week after week.

I also don't think comfort food has to be about what applies to your upbringing. I think it just means food that makes you feel better when you need to feel better, either physically or especially emotionally. Generally that means food that they used to cook in the "good ol' days" like meatloaf, mashed potatoes, mac & cheese, etc.

For me, comfort food = whatever delicious food I'm in the mood for at the moment. Last night, dinner was pan fried fish, mashed potatoes, and salad with my mom's homemade dressing (lime/oil/salt). I decided that's what I wanted for dinner around 3 pm yesterday. Stopped off on my way home & bought what I needed, cooked it, and ate. Now THAT'S comfortable to me!

What Nancy said.

nancy, you and I are reading the same newspaper. Sigh. No good news is right, not for Michigan anyway.

Sally, I dont' take any offense at all, and you may be as crabby as you like. I'll make my version of comfort food, which is tea and toast. Funny, I've noticed that most comfort food is not all that healthy, LOL, it's something about carbohydrates that soothes us, I guess, or maybe it's just the memories of simpler and easier times.

I have noticed the trend and I think TV always needs a "gimmick" or people wouldn't watch it.

Terri, can you start with the "flourless" chocolate cake recipe, add some orange extract and orange zest, maybe, and a nice dark chocolate ganache?

Flourless Chocolate Cake
1/2 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup white sugar
18 (1 ounce) squares bittersweet chocolate
1 cup unsalted butter
6 eggs

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Grease one 10 inch round cake pan and set aside.

In a small saucepan over medium heat combine the water, salt and sugar. Stir until completely dissolved and set aside.

Either in the top half of a double boiler or in a microwave oven melt the bittersweet chocolate. Pour the chocolate into the bowl of an electric mixer.
Cut the butter into pieces and beat the butter into the chocolate, 1 piece at a time. Beat in the hot sugar-water. Slowly beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Have a pan larger than the cake pan ready, put the cake pan in the larger pan and fill the pan with boiling water halfway up the sides of the cake pan.

Bake cake in the water bath at 300 degrees F (150 degrees C) for 45 minutes. The center will still look wet. Chill cake overnight in the pan. To unmold, dip the bottom of the cake pan in hot water for 10 seconds and invert onto a serving plate.

Here's another one my Aunt Ellen gave me, she's gluten intolerant. I will freely admit that I have NOT tried this, I kept it because Elery's daughter cannot have gluten either.

Garbanzo Bean Chocolate Cake (Gluten Free!)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9 inch round cake pan.

Place the chocolate chips into a microwave-safe bowl. Cook in the microwave for about 2 minutes, stirring every 20 seconds after the first minute, until chocolate is melted and smooth. If you have a powerful microwave, reduce the power to 50 percent.

Combine the beans and eggs in the bowl of a food processor. Process until smooth. Add the sugar and the baking powder, and pulse to blend. Pour in the melted chocolate and blend until smooth, scraping down the corners to make sure chocolate is completely mixed.

Transfer the batter to the prepared cake pan.
Bake for 40 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 to 15 minutes before inverting onto a serving plate. Dust with confectioners' sugar just...

I've always thought comfort food is whatever you grew up with. In my DH's case (Chinese-Portugese from Hong Kong), it's Portugese pressed rice with one of those flattened, salt-cured ducks on top. Or congee (rice gruel) with a thousand-year-old black egg.

For me, having grown up in Chicago, it's macaroni & cheese with either good homemade sausages or a big fat hamburger patty with cheddar melting on top. Or chicken pot pie. All of which is hideously bad for you, so I seldom indulge myself because I will, of course, eat it ALL.

I'm all for comfort food showing up on the Food Network. Frankly, I am so tired of restaurants right now: foamy sauces and cleverly arranged plates with two bites of food on it, all of which is mostly forgettable and incredibly expensive.

I think what Nancy said is the essence of comfort food-- the food item maybe not as important as the idea that each of us has had a time when things weren't personally so unstable; when maybe there was someone else or some other situation that made us feel a bit safer.

And anything that brings that feeling back-- whether it's a fragrance caught that reminds us of Gramma's kitchen-- a Grandchild's soft wondrous fingers--a call from an old friend-- or making up your DH's favorite chocolate cake--enjoy!

I know exactly what comfort food is because my mom is a big fan of it. My own personal reaction to stress is to lose my appetite. Every person in my family has the opposite reaction; they all tend to eat unhealthy foods when they need "comfort." I think this happens when they are homesick, sick with a cold or flu or just feeling blue. Most of my family was raised in a time and in families in which food was used as a reward or punishment. For my mom, she never was allowed dessert or common foods, so chocolate or pizza can set her into a good mood immediately. For my grandparents, they grew up during the depression, so large amounts of food or anything with good meat made them feel good and safe. For my dad, I'm not sure why he feels the need to eat the way he did (not any more due to health reasons.) For myself, if I make a dessert twice a month and have two servings at a time, wow, that is being decadent!! If I do find the need for comfort food, it is not due to stress, it is usually due to a remembrance of a time or a family member and their favourite dish.
I, too, get tired of the popular cooks doing the same thing over and over and of the way they make it seem like it is the "new" must have. But, as in fashion or anything else, that is how they sell us new stuff. It is what everyone is doing, so it is what we all have to do. I do wonder how some of those TV cooks are able to eat so much and stay so slim!! Well, some of them, not all...
Hm, now I am remembering the one thing my gram always wanted me to make her...my chocolate cinnamon swirl buns! I could only eat one, because the yeast always made me feel full, but that is what she wanted.

I read a article in our local paper before Thanksgiving about how this year in particular it seemed people were making a huge deal out of Thanksgiving and looking forward to it more than ever and they attributed it to exactly what Nancy posted.

I am having my comfort food right now - a mug of Campbell's tomato soup with crushed saltines in it. Now, I have several containers of my homemade roasted tomato soup in the freezer - but that just won't do sometimes...

(don't look at the top of this page - it is a link to comfort food recipes - LOL)

We have a relatively new high-end restaurant that serves meatloaf with mac & cheese as one of their signature meals. it is their most ordered menu meal. Now almost every high-end restaurant in our area has Meatloaf and Mac & Cheese as individual items on their menu, but Treleo's started it.

As for TV -- it's the latest in-vogue cuisine. I personally think everyone is getting more then a little jaded by the haute cuisine of the last 20 years. The term Comfort Food has been around the mid-west for forever: tapioca or rice pudding; banana cream pie, chocolate cake with fudge frosting; meatloaf; mac & cheese; plain grilled steak; fruit pies; jello salads; pancakes with maple syrup; just all the ordinary, un-fancy foods that taste like their ingredients, and not a bunch of fancy sauces or exotic foods and spices..... just the plain old foods Gramma and Mom used to make.

Personally.... HURRAY!

Funny. I don't equate comfort food to food my Mom or Nana made for us. Yes I loved all of it...ok, most of it...ok, some of it...but

To me comfort food is what I want when I just want to cuddle up with something that is easy and appeals to me. Generally carbs are involved.

Mashed potatoes and gravy
Chicken and sliders
Spaghetti with meat sauce
Poutine
Mac and Cheese
Stuffed ribs
Toast dipped in ketchup (should probably add that to the weird food thread!)LOL
Yorkshire pudding

This is very interesting. Maybe one thing that makes foods comfort foods is that by eating them you've given yourself permission to just enjoy, and not worry about the calories, cholesterol, or any of the other no-noes we are barraged with these days. There are so many rules about what to eat and what not to eat, that when we we something just because it makes us happy to eat it, that food becomes our comfort food. It seems that comfort foods are usually warming, too. Macaroni and Cheese is especially good on a cold night. Here in Texas, on cold, blustery days, especially cold rainy days, a good hot bowl of chile is nearly everyone's idea of comfort food.

I also like a hot bowl of stew (veggie stew, of course!)

My oddest comfort food is chocolate milk. Yes, I love Nestle's Quick. I admit it.

Okay, I must be feeling better, I'm thinking that comfort foods sound pretty good, now. Hey, my appetite's back!

Sally

The think the food shows use the term "comfort food" as a catch phrase meaning the opposite of low Cholesteral/low fat! LOL!!

According to Wikipedia:

"There are three categories of food fads. Some food fads incorporate a combination of categories:

1. The virtue of a particular food or food group is exaggerated and purported to cure specific diseases, and is therefore incorporated as a primary constituent of an individualÂs diet.
2. Foods are eliminated from an individualÂs diet because they are viewed as harmful.
3. An emphasis is placed on eating certain foods to express a particular lifestyle."

Lindac's mention of "bistro" brought to mind several other fads. When I was in college during the '70s health food was all the craze. I still love avacado sandwiches though! Then there was "haute cuisine" whatever that was. And then there was "cajun cook'n" and everything was being blackened! I just can't eat burned anything no matter how magnificent others say it is. In the '90s everything was enclosed in a pot sticker. Pot sticker vegetables, pot sticker chicken and I can even remember chocolate pot stickers. I never understood the concept.

Oh and let's not forget the "deconstructed era" where no food can touch another food. You get the burger, then the bun, then the pickles, then the mustard and on and on. But heaven forbid if one food item touches another until the customer reconstructs his burger. Good thing this did not last too long.

Now in upscale restaurants everything has a bit of colored foam on it. I'd rather have parsley, the foam looks like some kind of weird, voodoo fog hovering over the food. I don't like it.

As far as meatloaf being a new high end restautant item, it has been on menus in the Midwest forever. I waitressed in the '70s and '80s and every restaurant I ever worked in, including fine dining, had meatloaf on the menu at some time or other.

Michelle

Michelle, I posted you a seperate thread.

Annie, thanks for the Chocolate Cake recipe..I'll try it! But it won't work..I mean sure I could add orange flavor to it..but the cake I want is a real cake with a "real crumb"..

The one I made the other night was off the package of Gluten Free AP flour from Red Mill..It had a strange after taste. But it was definately "cake". I just threw out the rest of the package of AP flour. Good thing it was small! But the boys ate the cake..just goes to show..anything sweet and chocolate can be consumed...LOL

I've tried and come up with a few great tasting Gluten Free recipes. I'd be happy to share..I think I'll start posting them on my blog, and then adding them to my recipe page online too.

~side note: I just got the word that I can have small amounts of Organic Beef!!!!!!! Like once a week and not to much...Gosh I wish you lived next door..I'd buy a few pounds of yours!

Terri, thanks so much for the recipe. I know Joe will like this one!

Have you considered using Potato Starch in the cake?

I know it sounds weird but I made the Maryanne's Pandoro recipe and it calls for Potato Starch and it a very nice texture to it, a bit finer then AP Flour. In fact if I had not made the recipe I doubt I would have known the difference. The outside was nice and crispy too, just like it is supposed to be.

Michelle

Last night comfort food was about 4oz of gin. Not chilled and not stirred just poured in a glass and drank.

: (
michael

Bad day, Michael? No fun.

Sally