Comfort Foods and Indulgences

A few nights ago, I made a roast chicken, a huge salad, and some baked sweet potatoes. I ate my sweet potato and although Eli loves them, he ignored them. I couldn’t waste them, so I took the skin off, tossed the potato meat into my ricer and threw the puree into the fridge. As I was cleaning out my fridge days later, I remembered the puree.

I turned to my trustee baking bible, Dorie’s, Baking: From My Home to Yours and adapted her pumpkin muffins for my left over sweet potato puree. They were perfectly light, not too dense and deliciously complimented my morning tea. The uneaten muffins went to work with Miguel. The kids were happy, I was happy and hopefully, Miguel’s office will be happy, too.

I resisted Facebook for years, but the ease with which I could share and view pictures of a high-school reunion compelled me. So like most people my age, I found myself using the site to reconnect with a past I had previously ignored or forgotten. Then, when my husband passed away suddenly a little more than a year ago, Facebook became a strange lifeline during my first year of grief. Frankly, being on Facebook makes me think about what it must be like to be dead, floating like a ghost into and out of people’s lives, into and out of all the worlds we’ve inhabited. The compression and conflation of time that Facebook provides makes way for the beguiling draw of nostalgia.

Nostalgia, like grief, is essentially homesickness, and we tend to get homesick when we want to restore the parts of ourselves we think we are losing or have lost. Soon enough, I found myself looking up my old summer camps, my old junior high school (that’s what we New Yorkers called middle school), and inevitably I discovered a Facebook page dedicated to Riverdale, the small northwest Bronx neighborhood where I spent my formative years.

It rains constantly here in the winter so comfort food is always something we crave. What is it about dreary weather that makes you want to eat? And not just eat anything, it has to be goood. And warm. And full of flavor. Cheesy and buttery helps too.

I also crave easy to make dinners. Lately I’ve found myself saying “this is my busy time of year”. But I’m finding I’m saying that all year round. The wheel basically never stops turning. Part of me thinks I’d like to jump off, but then what would I do?

So now I have my busy times (which is always) and my busier times, (which is 25% of the time). Help! I know everyone is busy, I just don’t ever remember so much craziness. We are all living the over-scheduled life. Anyway, just like you, I always have to find a way to make dinner easier, faster and better. And everyone in my family seems to have an opinion on how I could do that. They are so helpful:).

This pasta dish is one of my go to recipes. It starts with having extra cooked chicken breasts around. I always cook more than I need when I’m making a chicken meal. I leave the extra breasts plain, stick them in the fridge and cube them up the next day for a dish like this. You could also cook up the chicken especially for this meal, it just takes more time (but it’s doable). Leftover rotissere chicken is also an option.

I'm spending a few days in what I'm told is the Mid-West of America (albeit the Northern Mid-West), a place I've never been to before.  It's a land of lakes and fir trees and glittering silver birches, and flying in I was startled (and a little homesick) by the landscape's resemblance to Norway.  Of course everyone who lives here is either Norwegian or Swedish.

My Minnesota hostess (who is also one of my best girlfriends) adapted a corn pudding from the book Local Flavors by Deborah Madison.  Don't be put off by the name. The recipe is delicate and delicious. I've found that using a mellifluous deep-South accent – as in "coooorrn puddin'" – assures its proper status in culinary Americana. 

This is an American staple, transformed and updated by the use of fresh herbs and goat cheese.  Up here, there is a farmer's market three times a week, and she used fresh corn as well as fresh parsley and chives cut from the selection of clay pots outside her kitchen door.