Comfort Foods and Indulgences

I am one of those people who enjoys a mid-afternoon sweet snack with coffee. The cravings for something sugary seem to hit about the three o'clock hour. I try so hard to be good but I've stopped fighting it. I figure the penalty is about 100 lunges or something like that. I'm over it. I swear I only take a few bites. I indulge in my sweet treat with French pressed black coffee I make at home. It all keeps me going until at least happy hour. 

I have always been nuts about nuts in my desserts. I love the texture and complexity they bring to the table. And walnuts are by far my absolute favorite. This cake combines the perfect level of sweetness with the pleasantly bitter flavor of the walnuts. And let's not mention the frosting, adding a whole other layer of yummy.

Perfect for entertaining or just to have around...even though it's dangerous and addicting. But you knew that just by looking at it.

Pizza is local. A guy from Cincinnati traveling in Italy will thumb his nose at the pizza because it’s not what he used to eat in Ohio when he was going through puberty. Italians are no different. I know Romans who make rude gestures when they talk about the pizza from Naples.

“The crust is too thick — and then it falls apart in the middle. It is without structure.”

I’ve eaten a lot of pizza in Naples; I’ve downed an obscene number of pies at Baffetto in Rome; I’ve had Sicilian pizza in Sicily, Pugliese pizza in Puglia and Ligurian pizza in Liguria (excellent, by the way) and pizza, at its best, is totally local, which means to say it reflects the personality and the groceries of its neighborhood.

Obviously I’m not referring here to pizza chains, which produce cookie-cutter pies of no interest. Nor am I referring to take-out pizza, which is an abomination. Take-out pizza absorbs the taste and smell of the cardboard it travels in. By the time it arrives you may as well just eat the box. No, I’m talking about real pizza.

A bit of a cold spell finally hit the Pacific Northwest this past week. The rain was so nice, except it rained while we were harvesting our vineyard, not cool mother nature, not cool. We have had such an unusually hot summer so the rain was a nice change for the most part.

During the rainstorm, all I could think about was making soup. As soon as I had a free moment, I did just that.

Have you ever had creamy chicken noodle as opposed to the clear, broth kind? It's so good. The consistency is not thick like potato soup, but the creamy part adds mouthfeel. With homemade bread, it's amazing. In fact the whole family asked for seconds.

I think if you are not going to make your own stock/broth, creamy is the way to go when it comes to chicken soup. This recipe is really something you can throw together on a weeknight. In fact, the chicken can go into the broth totally frozen. And is fully cooked within 15 minutes. That is the beauty of using tenderloins. Who can beat that for a mid-week dinner? 

You might be looking at this pot of soup and wondering where are the carrots? While I love carrots, the creamy version of chicken noodle tastes so much better with parsnips. They are just as sweet, if not sweeter and my family loves them.

The greatest thing to come out of Buffalo, NY is their wings.

Buffalo wings are chicken wings and drummettes that are fried without breading and then coated in a vinegar based sauce typically comprised of melted butter and hot sauce. They're served with a cool, tangy blue cheese dressing for dipping and some crisp celery sticks.

Buffalo wings are the ideal party food guest: they get along well with others like pizza and nachos, and they're best buds with cold beer. So they've got to be part of your Super Bowl party line-up, even if you're making different wings like my Maple-Beer-Chili Chicken Wings (which you really, really should). They're too self-confident to be intimated by other wings at the party.