What’s your go-to comfort food that doesn’t leave you feeling wildly uncomfortable?
7Fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, some deep-fried Brussels sprouts, a nice big plate of nachos–it’s like a warm blanket while you’re at the dinner table. But later on, it’s like a hot towel left in your tummy by a clumsy surgeon. And yet, eating healthy doesn’t always have to be kale salads and green smoothies. So what do you eat when you don’t want a gut bomb but also want to, you know, enjoy your food? I’m a fan of roasted spaghetti squash with a nice tomato sauce and some homemade meatballs, myself. (This topic was shamelessly stolen from the writeup for the pulse oximeter. I have no scruples. None. I’m pretty sure that’s an obsolete unit of measure, anyway.)
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I make rice in a big saute pan with loads of butter and sauteed diced onion, and then sprinkle a little garlic salt on top. Yes, I fry the rice before adding the water. The leftovers go into one-cup containers in the freezer.
@werehatrack I’m with you up until ‘a little garlic’. We do similar but with considerable minced garlic, and some seasoned salts.
@duodec That’s good, too.
What do I eat when I don’t want a gut bomb? I still have a gut bomb because I’m no wuss. In fact, I ate ice cream for dinner tonight… And no, I don’t mean I had ice cream for dessert.
Ok so don’t think I’m crazy but mine is those boxed scalloped potatoes. They remind me of my childhood and there is something about freeze dried potatoes that tastes so good. OR mostly anything at Taco Bell except no rice on any of it. And there is no Taco Bell within 20 miles of where I live!
Taco Bell…or Top Ramen with meatballs.
For me, it’s a large bowl of pho from a local place near me that does it just right. It’s incredibly flavorful and leaves me full and satisfied, without feeling gross afterwards. Any big soup is a win for me but a good pho is the next level, truly unbeatable.
@Nova_1231 There used to be a place (within reasonable driving distance) that had the best pho. Then it closed down. But apparently it was owned by the same family that had the sushi restaurant almost right next to it, which now serves pho. Well, the experience was different, but the pho still tasted just as good.
But then after a while, it was a different recipe.
I miss it.
Still good, because pho is good, but not as delicious as it used to be.
Tacos and margaritas
I go to some sort of instant ramen. We have two BIG Asian markets nearby and if I can read none of the words on the package I’m like… I’m going to try that.
I’m not batting 1.000 but I’ve found some that are awesome. I think I need to understand the word for shrimp in many languages and avoid that. I love shrimp but dried in a ramen ain’t my jam. 
But yeah, so much yum with ramen.
EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!
Chicken mole from my favorite Mexican restaurant.
Going there for my birfday on Saturday!
Also carne asada quesadillas from my favorite Mexican food truck.
Basically “Mexican food”.
@mikey I have to ask: Is it San Diego carne asada? Because the carne asada from anywhere else is just okay, but from San Diego it’s awesome!
(I have no idea how far north the San Diego flavorings go, nor how far south. I heard it’s done like that in Tijuana, but I’ve never actually confirmed it.)
@xobzoo There are no carne asada fries on the menu, so I’m guessing not. I’m out in Denver so it hasn’t made this far northeast either.
@mikey @xobzoo So what is your favorite Mexican restaurant? (Happy belated birthday, hope it was good!)
@Kyeh @xobzoo I like Tequila’s for a sit-down and El Lechon if I want to hit the food truck. And thank you! It was delicious and my mother-in-law picked up the check.
@mikey @xobzoo Nice!
I’m in a Mexican food mood; I’ve been making burritos but mine aren’t that good.
@Kyeh @xobzoo my favorite seasoning is a healthy scoop of “someone else making it”.
@mikey @xobzoo
Yes, for sure - especially someone from that country!
@Kyeh My favorite Mexican restaurant is a little family-owned place called Los Nopalitos about a mile away. Blue-collar prices, very good quality.
@werehatrack Yeah, it’s always the little places that are the best, I think. We’ve got some ultra-expensive places that are trying way too hard to be trendy and do things like mash up your guacamole at the table, whoopy-doo. Described by one reviewer as “white-washed Mexican food.” 🫤
Meat.
call me a basic bitch if you want,
1)Grilled Cheese sandwich, and Tomato Soup( Pref. Campbell’s)
2)Kraft Mac & Cheese.
3)PB(Jif) and J(Grape)
Nachos,
Fried egg Sandwich on fresh homemade sourdough
Smoked cream cheese and pepper jelly
Brie, Camembert, Bourgonzola (Aldi special) and fresh SD bread.
Pulled Pork sandwich.
I don’t have any stomach issues and am pretty much a
seafoodsee food guy. If I see food I’ll eat it.Ice Cream. Chocolate.
@Kidsandliz I love ice cream. (Almost) any flavor. At least a pint at a time if I don’t have to share. A full complement of Blue Bell flavors are readily available at stores around here.
But I don’t/won’t eat Dutch Chocolate or anything similar that’s basic chocolate.
Ask, if you want to know why. But that might kill your appetite for it.
@Kidsandliz @phendrick Well now I’m curious…and afraid to ask.
@Kidsandliz @phendrick @xobzoo
I don’t want to know.
@Kidsandliz @phendrick My appetite for BlueBell vanished over thirty years ago when they caved to capitalist greed and started watering down their recipes with fillers and such crap. Before that, it was really good stuff, but nowadays it’s not all that different from any of the other decent brands, and some of their best flavors haven’t been seen in ages - or aren’t the same as what some of us remember. There was briefly some hope that the 2015 scandals and recalls would knock some sense into them and restore the product to the old recipes, but that didn’t happen. So I buy small amounts of Ben & Jerry’s instead.
@Kidsandliz @werehatrack Not as good as it used to be? Thought it was maybe me and my changing taste buds.
Agree about the fillers and other additives. “Homemade vanilla”? Everybody uses caregeenan and guar gum at home, right?
A local hamburger place features some ice cream specials, so i’ve been indulging a lot lately. But all the flavors have seemed a LOT sweeter than i remembered. Just me? (Except for coffee, i seldom sweeten anything, so maybe i’m no longer used to it.)
@Kidsandliz @phendrick If you look at the ingredients on their “Natural Vanilla Bean”, you can see the last remaining vestige of the BlueBell that made the name famous. And if they used it as the basis for the Peaches And Cream and the Strawberries And Cream flavors, I’d buy both. But they don’t.
@Kidsandliz @phendrick alkalized chocolate is a no-go?
I find comfort in most foods… Until it turns into lead in my guts. Which is a problem because I eat like a dog: continually chewing until I get to the bottom of the bowl.
Now apply that to a 32 oz bag of gummy bears (which, turns out, was my lunch and dinner this past Thursday; and an upset stomach all of Friday and part of Saturday)
I suppose my go-to’s can be anything. The aforementioned gummy bears, corn balls, corn cones, blocks of cheese, flavored milk, ice cream sandwiches, actual sandwiches, pickled vegetables, cold vegetables… I’ve had a salt lick at some point as well. (Maybe I am a goat…)
@pakopako Find comfort in the fact that it wasn’t sugar free gummy bears, for you would assuredly have died and laid waste to much of the circumambient space…
Of late, I have switched off to homemade, soft pretzels with spicy whole mustard.
Happiness is being a mite peckish, and thawing, re-crisping a soft pretzel (3 min in an air fryer) to eat warm with spicy mustard. They are low cal and satisfying.
In my area of the country now, soft pretzels are generally not available locally. When we lived in the NE, we sort of took them for granted. Since absence makes the heart grow fonder, having a superior pretzel, when you want it, is a treat.
Some months ago, I invested in a small bottle of food-grade sodium hydroxide and a jar of Barley Malt syrup (Amazon for both). I use ordinary Gold Medal all-purpose flour, Fleischmann’s instant yeast, water, and salt to make the dough.
I have an Ankarsrum mixer, which can easily handle over a kilo of this low hydration, stiff dough (56% hydration). (One can use a KitchenAid, but only mix for 2 minutes at a time or you will burn out the motor.)
Turns out that soft pretzels are actually easy and quick to make–easier than bread. I just toss everything into the Ankarsrum bowl and let it mix (scraper and roller) for 8-9 minutes, take the dough out, portion it into ten (~100g ea) pieces, roll them to 24" ropes and twist to form the three ring pretzel shape, and lay them on parchment paper on two sheet pans (5 per pan).
Covered, they then rise for about 45 min, when I take each one in turn and dunk it for 30 sec in a 1M NaOH solution (40g NaOH in 1,000g water), place it back on the parchment, add pretzel salt or other coarse salt, and bake for ~10 min in a 400°F oven.
Takes a little over an hour to make ten pretzels. I usually eat one warm from the oven and freeze the remainder.
@Jackinga Wow, impressive!
I looked up that mixer (never heard of them before) and
it’s quite magnificent, as is the price!
@Jackinga Hobart-made in USA vintage Kitchen Aids of higher power ratings probably could have handled such loads, but yep, not the newer ones.
@Kyeh Back during the Covid lockdown, I tried my hand at baking. While I have always cooked, I wasn’t much of a baker. We missed having fresh baguettes.
I thought, “Well I will just bake some. It’s just flour, water, yeast, and salt. What could be so hard?”
A bit of hubris there, me thinks, eh?
I baked batch after batch for several months and ate a lot of flat, not so baguettey failures. Gradually, I learned about what ingredients work best and most of all developed my technical skills in understanding how dough is transformed into the thermosetting plastic, which we call bread, on a consistent and repeatable basis.
I started in Nov 20, and by early Spring 21, I could make a pretty decent baguette. So much so, that when I showed up for an Easter family dinner with four warm baguettes to a large family gathering in which no one thought to bring bread, my contribution was a big hit.
In the process, I about wore out a KitchenAid mixer which I had purchased in the late '80s. I rebuilt/repaired it several times, but I could never restore it completely. That stand mixer served us well over the years, but was clearly on it’s last legs, and it was incapable of doing large batches of bread dough, though adequate for lighter tasks.
I began to search for a replacement over a few months time. I stumbled on the Ankarsrum, of which I too had never heard of. The more I learned the more likely I felt it would be what I was looking for.
I found a deal for a refurb/reconditioned one at about the same price point as an upper end KitchenAid. With some trepidation, I decided to take the plunge.
I have been more than happy with that decision ever since. That Ankarsrum can mix rings around a KitchenAid especially for low hydration bread doughs (i.e., stiff) and large batches to boot. If it died (still going strong, btw) I would never go back to the KitchenAid.
I still have the old KitchenAid which I like better for light duty jobs such as making whipped cream and the like, but I use the Ankarsrum for anything serious involving any quantity of ingredients. It is light years ahead of the best KitchenAid in that regard.
Turns out that the Ankarsrum (originally a Swedish Electrolux) and the KitchenAid (old Hobart) are of similar vintage (viz., the late 1930s), but where the KitchenAid became a cheapened, lower quality, throwaway machine, the Ankarsurm was held to the original standard and is a workhorse, powerful machine to this day.
The Ankarsrum excels at every thing and has as many or more attachment gadgets available as does the KitchenAid, if your mind runs in that direction.
Me?
I am primarily interested in a robust mixer and haven’t as yet jumped to acquire any additional gadgets for it.
@Jackinga Nice! I’d never heard of that mixer, but I don’t do any sophisticated baking, myself. I have a Nutritionist bread machine and I make whole wheat bread in it but not much else. There’s a good bakery in walking distance where I sometimes splurge and get a nice loaf of some kind; after hours you can see the baker loading up the dough on huge paddles and sliding it into this revolving oven, and taking the finished ones out. Fun to watch.
@Kyeh Aye, you’re lucky! A good bakery in walking distance? If I had such a thing nearby, there would be a well worn path between me and it.
I walk more than 5.5 miles a day, every day, but with a bakery at the end of the trail, well, I would probably walk more.
@Jackinga Oh, but then you wouldn’t have developed those great baguette-making skills!
Also, this bakery is about half a mile from my house so you’d walk less. The things that keep me from going there more are that most of their bread is sourdough, which I don’t prefer, and they’re pretty expensive. Fabulous pastries though.
Mom’s Turkey and Noodles, which I have posted here before; a staple of post Thanksgiving dinners. Its really really hard to stop eating while there is some left.