Egg nog waffles. That’s the hook that drew me to Melba’s American Comfort. Diane watched the interview with Melba Wilson on CBS Saturday Morning (check out the interview below). Of course, Melba’s brand of comfort food goes well beyond Egg Nog Waffles (p. 4-6). How about Eggy French Toast? (p. 18-19) And Classic Corn Bread? (p. 156).
If you’re into comfort food, Melba’s book is the right one for you! What’s your favorite comfort food? GRADE: A
Table of Contents:
Introduction viii
1 Breakfast & Brunch 3
2 Comfortizers 23
3 Main Contentment: Fish, Poultry & Meat 49
4 Fried Chicken: A World of its Own 125
5 Some Joy on the Side 145
6 Sweet Surrender 181
7 A Little Liquid Comfort 207
Acknowledgements 223
Index 227
My favorite comfort foods are meat/pasta/cheese combinations. So lasagna, ziti, pastitsio, etc. However, my A1C does not find the carbs as comforting as my psyche does, so comfort foods of any stripe must now be an occasional treat, alas!
Lasagne is my absolute favourite too! We share the work or rather I help a bit, doing the arranging of the slices (must be Italian of course) and the filling with the sauces my wife makes.
The good news is that we also like it when it’s reheated after being frozen, so we make several of them and when we have family guests my wife doesn’t have too much work.
A bit OT (sorry if I’m repeating myself):
I think I’ve written already about my wife’s nephew (he’s a prof at Vanderbilt uni in Nashville and we visited them too some years ago) and his family visiting us in Hungary The last visitor was his son who really enjoyed our lasagne – and of course the goulash …
We had made a special lasagne variation with green pepper seeds in the white sauce and he immediately asked where we bought the pepper, he couldn’t find it in Hungarian stores. So I told him that I brought those from Germany and watching his face added:
And we still have a package of this as a small present for you to take home …
And now I’m getting hungry, but no – have to wait until dinner time!
Wolf, Diane is a picky eater, but she loves Italian food so that is the type of restaurant we frequent most often. I have to be careful because pasta is NOT low-carb. I have tried some “low carb” pastas but they taste like paste.
Deb, same here! My A1C varies in the 6 range. I’m always on the lookout for low carb substitutes for comfort foods. Nut bars come close!
George, we eat Barilla whole wheat pasta for the most part. LOTS of fiber. Yes, to that as comfort food, but also things like meat loaf (which I never eat these days), mac & cheese (ditto), beef stew (which Jackie makes in the winter),
Jackie says her #1 comfort food is pizza.
Jeff, I share Jackie’s preference for pizza as a comfort food. Diane buys Barilla pasta when it’s on sale. I like De Cecco’s Egg Pasta. Yummy!
I had to look this up – comfort food?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_food
There I found several hundred dishes from all over the world – just around 40 from Germany and also 40 US recipees.
But many of these have just too many calories for an old man – when I was young they were ok for me.
And many of them were cheap …
A bit OT:
When I was boy with three sisters, parents and grandma living with us we had a fixed menu plan repeating every two weeks.
Much of that you’d call comfort food, inexpensive ingredients but sometimes taking my mother and my sisters who helped a lot of work.
I liked to help my grandmother with making her specialties – fond memories!
Later I started doing food too – my favourite was Toast Hawaii which even my father liked.
Wolf, Mac & Cheese and potatoes are traditional American comfort foods. Diane loves soups in the Winter–they comfort her. And warm bread.
Any kind of pasta, which I rarely eat now because I can’t deal with the guilt or calories.
Patti, when I was younger, I could eat pasta (so many varieties!) or pizza (so many varieties!) every day! Now, I’m ruled by my glucose meter and A1C.
This sounds good. I’ve never heard of her, so she must not be on food networki.
On a lighter note, I’ve lost between 45 -50 lbs since January. I’ve dropped probably 2 dress sizes, maybe more depending on the manufacturer. I now wear leggings, something I NEVER thought I’d be able to wear. This was not the result of anything I consciously did. I suddenly found my pants baggy. I had been spending a LOT of time talking on the phone to someone from my high school “lunch bunch”, a group a friend of mine & I created from our 50th high school reunion. While talking on the phone for a couple of hours every night, I wasn’t eating much. I think my stomach must have shrunk, because I can’t eat as much as I used to. I still have desserts, but in much smaller portions as everything else.
A bonus to this is that I rarely have any arthritis pain. I’m also dating a guy from high school (we didn’t know each other then, 1400 kids in our graduating class). We did know each other in college, which I remembered, but he didn’t. The kicker was we actually dated then but neither of us remembered that (I found a picture which shocked me & him). We’re going to cleveland later this month to visit the rock n roll hall of fame. We’re both cochairs of our high school 55th reunion committee and on the alumni foundation of our high school (revamping our hall of fame). We have notables like Greg Bear, Joan Embry, the baseball Boone family, Jack Tempchin, Steven Bishop, Kathy Najimy, Valerie Ziegenfuss to mention a few.
Matzo ball or beef barley soup
Meatballs and spaghetti
Grilled cheese with tomato
Chicken noodle soup with Saltines
Those are comfort foods.
Jackie has one reply: pizza.
Jeff, my sisters are big fans of grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato. My backup to pizza would be spaghetti and meatballs. Diane loves Chicken noodle soup with Saltines in the Winter.
When we go out we usually also have Pizza. There was one near our old house and now we have two, both very good, one on our main road, the other on the Danube!
I’ve often wondered why Hungarians are so good pizza makers.
Re calories:
We used to have one pizza each, the leftovers of my wife’s pizza Hawaii were mine.
Now we take two halves home for dinner – unless our young ones are with us – no leftovers then.
We try to compensate the caloric intake by eating lots of salad and vegetable soup.
PS:
Just reading that list on wiki with all the international comfort food from Greece tp Spain made me hungry.