Beans and greens. Season with some Italian sausage or ham. Add some pasta if too many beans are a problem.

Chicken vegetable soup. Make stock from bones and skin of deli chicken then basically it's a non vegetarian minestrone soup with left over chicken, greens, beans, tomato and any other veggie you like.

Basically been eating a pot of either or weekly for the past month. Warms you when it's cold and/or windy out, hydrates you when humidity is below 10%.

Any kind of vegetable and meat ragout, with tomatoes and onions in it, emphasis on the vegetables. Lately , I've been making bean stews, but my chunky spaghetti sauce to mulligan stew to minestrone to enriched (i.e., with meat) ratatouille count. I've made such things vegetarian, but a bit of meat amps up both the flavor of comfort and the protein content.

Lentil soup, home made chicken soup from home made stock, steamed spinach, asparagus, bok choy or okra. Can include butter (NOT margarine) from pastured sources. Basmati rice (white) cooked in broth. Quinoa. Steamed salmon. Avocado and grapefruit salad with unsweetened homemade vinaigrette.

A pot of collard greens.

Greens and garlic soup. I've been sick with the crud, and had several quart containers of veggie stock I'd made, so I heated those up with lots and lots of garlic and some greens such as kale and spinach. That's what I ate for 2 days during the worst of my cold. I had no appetite for anything else. Sort of the vegetarian version of chicken soup.

Sally

Lentil and chard soup, kale and potato soup, turkish red lentil soup, red bell pepper soup, pureed mushroom soup. Also mustard greens (mizuna or tatsoi) sautéed with onions and shallots and red pepper flakes, served with mixed rice or oven-baked sweet potato fries. I prefer tatsoi because it's milder, and it looks so pretty growing, but I usually get about a bushel of mizuna from one single plant.

Minestrone accompanied by warm crusty bread. (olive oil, onion, garlic, carrot, celery, green beans, zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes, cannellini, whole wheat elbow macaroni, basil). It's totally refreshing and makes me feel really good.

Lamb chop and a baked potato.

Chicken and dumplings. The fluffy dumplings.

Chicken vegetable soup for me. I add sweet potato and rutabaga, celery and carrots. Hubs loves soups and stews and meatloaf with thick egg noodles

Hmmm, lots of variety, I see, though I notice that many posters share my taste for vegetable-filled soups, legumes, and greens. These last two are household favorites: spinach (frozen), chicory, radicchio are the chief ones. I love collard greens, but we can't get them here, and I have trouble finding ways to fix cabbage that I like. We make beans and greens, too: dried cannelini soaked and cooked with herbs; the long-head chicory called 'Catalogna' in Italian, braised with onion and a bay leaf; and simple egg noodles. It all goes together in one plate, with a bit of the pot liquor from the beans and greens, and a drizzle of olive oil and spoonful of grated Parmesan.

But when I'm feeling physically down, I go straight as an arrow to the lentil soup. It may be that the protein is particularly welcome, or the iron or other minerals, since I don't cook meat, and lentil soup and brown rice offer these in particular abundance. This isn't usually a problem, but there are these occasions when we get too busy to cook, or the episode of my husband's state when he came back from the hospital. They fed him well in rehabilitation, but he didn't care for the food. But he scarfed down the soup.

For me it's eggs and dark bread, preferably toasted. I do like lentils and beans of all sorts and greens and pretty much any vegetable. But when I'm feeling under the weather or "needy", I don't feel like spending hours cooking or chopping or whatever. Eggs are what come to mind, they are fast to cook, high in protein and nutrients, cheap, pretty much the perfect food.

Annie

If someone else in the family is under the weather or otherwise in need of restoration, I make chicken soup. DW makes avogolemono soup, which I guess is sort of the Greek version of chicken noodle soup?

Seems like many of us are mentioning soups of some kind, which makes sense - warm liquid is a classic feel-better-soon prescription.

If I'm myself the one not feeling well and DW is not around to - or not inclined to - cook for me, then it's straight to the pantry for one of the canned, packaged, frozen, or otherwise premade "comfort foods" supplied by the commercial food industry. I'm quite familiar with these, as someone who didn't really cook much before his mid twenties. Top Ramen instant noodles, Marie Calendars frozen pot pies, Campbells clam chowder in a can, and so on. Like Annie said, when ill, I don't really feel like cooking. And I'm sick, darn it, so that's an excuse to indulge in the sodium filled meals-in-a-box from my young single days. I never lose my appetite when I'm under the weather, unless of course the issue is itself something tummy-centric. Is it "feed a cold, starve a fever" or the other way around? I can never remember, so I feed them both.

Oh, wait, we were talking about healthy comfort food? Not necessarily meals for the ailing. Okay, then it's not just chicken soups around here. It's mashed or roast potatoes, bolognaise sauce on pasta, DW's meatloaf, abondigas soup, fried rice, dumplings and potstickers, beef stew, pot roast with lots of carrot and potato, roast chicken, mac and cheese. A lot of these are foods the kids liked when they were little, so we make them more when DD is home and DS isn't too busy.

Isn't all comfort food healthy?

That's why it's called comfort food

LOL! But no. A lot of "comfort foods" are anti-stress (i.e., high fat, which bonds to the stress chemicals or some such thing, soothing you (as in mac & cheese, ice cream, etc.)) rather than pro-health (high nutrients, which are healthy because they support your general well being, and especially your immune system (as in most of the vegetable heavy foods listed here)).

I haven't eaten this recently, but remember that for years my standard breakfast when sick would be tea with a little milk, toasted homemade bread with nothing on it, an apple, and a hardboiled egg. DH can handle that. It's not my usual breakfast and doesn't have much appeal when I'm well, so there must be something about that particular combination that suits my body when ill. About the cooking when sick or tired, Annie has a point. We usually have a pot of beans and broth on hand and that tides us over emergencies. I've had flu two or three times the last several years, been too sick to cook and yet never starved, though I'm the foodmaster of the household. So somehow our family food supply system works.

Melissa, my doctor used to tell me when the kids were sick to remember "BRATS". That would be bananas, rice, applesauce, toast, soup. My own brats got some combination of those things when they were sick with stomach issues.

I remember my Grandmother would give us ginger ale and saltine crackers, and if she was upset she'd have saltine crackers crumbled into warm milk.

My youngest daughter loved the ramen noodles. Now Makayla loves them, and I think they'd probably settle OK on a cranky tummy, much like chicken noodle soup, which I made for colds but not for upset stomachs.

Annie

I'm kind of the opposite of some of you. I've got issues with apples and rice, and minor issues with eggs and beans unless they're in combination with some other things; eggs are fine if have a lot of salt or fruit (e.g. pineapple) added. Soup isn't comfort food for me (and I'm really not sure if I could survive on it alone for very long—at least with much energy and feeling of wellbeing); same for legumes, unless maybe they're peanuts, black-eyed peas, or in the form of something like chili or burritos.

I'd say the following could be restorative foods for me (most of them are ingredients rather than dishes, but I did list at least a couple dishes):

• White mulberries (they're pretty healthy, IMO—at least in moderation; they have a lot of health benefits)
• Chives and/or green onions and/or to a lesser extend regular onions
• Home-grown produce
• Watermelon
• Baked, seasoned vegetables (ideally with meat in the middle)
• Cabbage
• Frozen corn (cooked so it's no longer frozen)
• Raw zucchini (and other squash, whether or not they're raw, particularly if they're prepared how I like them)
• Armenian cucumbers
• Homemade biscuits (with oil—not butter, lard, etc.)
• Cornbread (just corn for the grains; baked in a cast-iron frying pan)
• Tomatoes (Yes, I'm one of those people who thinks they're actually good for you unless you're allergic or something)
• Mushrooms (these have a lot of nutrition, and flavor)
• Garlic and/or garlic chives
• Peppers (hot and sweet; hot peppers are great for making a person feel better, in some circumstances)
• Millet (millet biscuits and stuff taste really good, and it doesn't give me the issues that rice gives me)
• Raw sorrel (I find that it seems to strengthen my teeth)
• Lacto-fermented vegetables, chile sauce, etc. (these are quite nutritious and important)
• Pickling/canning salt (Yes, I'm one of those people who thinks that sodium can actually be good for you—especially if you have adrenal fatigue or something; pickling/canning salt feels especially healthy to me, however; I'm not partial to unrefined sea salt)
• Cranberries (they're good for your bladder)
• Ground cherries
• Organic oranges
• Milk thistle (leaves or seeds)
• Food grade diatomaceous earth (this isn't really food, but it's helpful for me, in moderation, from a nutritional standpoint, and improves the flavor of some foods)
• Milk (maybe not the least toxic thing out there if you don't have your own cow, but the nutrients in it seem very helpful nonetheless; it definitely helps me to sleep, too—and it doesn't have to be warm)
• Raw rhubarb (full of vitamin K; the oxalic acid is supposed to be less healthy when rhubarb is cooked, but when raw, it's said to help purify your blood and stuff)
• Vinegar (yes, it seems healthy to me for some reason; maybe not everyone agrees)
• Pineapple
• Coarsely ground grains (they feel so much more energizing than finely ground grains; don't ask me why)
• Carbonation (in moderation; I'm not advocating corn syrup, phosphoric acid, etc.; you can carbonate your own stuff with dry ice if you need to avoid sugar or processed drinks)
• Milk porridge (in moderation)
• Pickles
• Curry
• Natural brown cane sugar (in combination with other things; it seems to produce a vapor that seems to be absent in both white sugar and molasses, for unexplained reasons, and this vapor seems to have several benefits; it's great in milk porridge, baked goods, baked goods that use baking soda instead of baking powder wherein the brown sugar is to neutralize the baking soda taste, etc.)
• Radishes
• Gelatin desserts / fruit gels (I'm trying to avoid using trademarks here. :))

When I make a soup or a bean dish I make a LOT and freeze it in slabs (I have a foodsaver, but you could use ziplock bags. Beans and rice are a perfect protein, beans have a lot of fiber and are very filling.

I usually make a pot of one of these each week and freeze several meals. I don't follow a recipe, so each batch is different.

Tonight is a rich turkey soup from Christmas dinner leftovers! I should have enough for 3-4 meals for the 2 of us.

I always get requests for a slabo soup when someone is ill! Nancy

Also, there's a once a week cooking forum here.

Pinto beans is my go-to in the fall & winter and sometimes even in summer. Bowl of beans for lunch or dinner, beans on my eggs for breakfast, in burritos, mashed up for tortilla chip dip, refried on the side w/ enchiladas. Pintos are one of my favorite foods.

Cilantro, you sound like Elery, he has to have his beans a couple of times a week, and any that aren't eaten for supper become bean dip, bean burritos, beans and rice or just eaten as part of his breakfast "omelet".

We had beans and greens for supper, the New Year's Day traditional dinner here.

Annie

Mashed potatoes and gravy are what I gravitate to when in need of comfort or restorative food if feeling down or under the weather. I cheat on the gravy and purchase already made beef or turkey gravy available fresh at a local market :-) Soup is good too but seems to require more time and prep work than I am inclined to if not feeling up to snuff. (same market has excellent instore-made soups I also indulge in).

Chicken bone broth, chicken soups (veggie or rice), 15 bean soup , fish chowder and lobster bisque. For a meal, baked haddock, steamed potatoes and sautéed spinach or steak and buttered toast. Sometimes I crave fresh pineapple or cucumbers. Not healthy but comforting, pastina with milk, butter and cheese. In the summer, garden veggies usually raw.

Soup is good too but seems to require more time and prep work than I am inclined to if not feeling up to snuff.

I make a big pot of soup, then freeze the extra in my muffin tin, then transfer to freezer bags. In mine, each indentation holds almost exactly half a cup, so 2 pieces = one cup of soup. If I'm in a hurry or under the weather I can just grab what I want from the freezer without having to go out.