What;s your go-to comfort food?

I am eating an early lunch of mine, and i am going to tell you, but, me being me, I have to tell you a story about it first.

The summer when I was nine, I spent a couple of weeks visiting cousins in Port Arthur, TX, a medium-sized city about 25 miles from my home town of Orange.  These cousins, Jimmy and Agnes Levingston and their children, Jimmie Ruth and Charley, were related through Jimmy's father, our "UNcle Sam," who was the oldest son of Samuel Hiram, the 8-year old boy in my story, "From Belfast to St. Joe,"which Shelagh was kind enough to include in the anthology, Forever Travels.

So, Jimmie Ruth and I were returning home from a walk when I attempted to follow her across a busy PA street, and failed.  I was more used to the quieter streets of Orange, and didn't see the car coming, and was struck by it.  I don't actually remember this.  I woke up several days later in a PA hospital with no memory of it ever having happened.  By then, the drs were reassuring my parents that all would be well.  The sisters who took care of the patients, though, were concerned that I wasn't eating the hospital food (What 9-year-old would??) and gave my dad's cousin permission to bring me anything I was willing to eat.   cousin Agnes asked what I wanted, I told her, and, embarrassed though she was, prepared it and brought it.  I was so happy (and I clearly remember this) I scarfed it down so quickly that it was gone before the sister on duty arrived.  When she asked me what I had been eating, I blissfully replied, to my cousin's consternation, "Blaack-eyed peeas and coornbread!"

I'm remembering this right now because I just finished eating a dishful for my early lunch.  The peas were made from scratch by daughter Lynn.  She brought a container of them last night, and put them in my freexer.  Today I made a batch of cornbread from a boxed mix to go with.  

I am still in food heaven.

What puts you there?

Pennsylvania-style "Chicken corn soup".

Chocolate or Cheetos

I have two - Canned Peaches and Beans n Franks...I'll bet Abe can tell you why!

Bet I could guess.  

I didn't explain why my dad's cousin was so embarrassed about bringing me peas and cornbread.

My mom's ancestors were farmers, and the peas and cornbread represented an inexpensive, easily available protein source.

Grain and legmes. Most agricultural cultures have at least one.

My dad's ancestors were seamen. Fish, shrimp, and crab were mainstays of their diet, and along the Gulf, wild duck that could be hunted, served fried with rice and gravy, or gumbo with rice. If they ate any form of corn, it was grits, made from native American hominy.

Anybody else have stories to go with?

7/11/2014

                 It's so difficult ! I love fried chicken, Tender Pork Loin, Ham, Black Beans,
                 I love chocolate, I have a recipe for a Lady Fingers dessert that you don't
                 cook but put in the frig., You can't eat this dessert everyday or you'll blow
                 up. I also love meat Loaf but I haven't eaten beef since last Dec., I do love
                 Buffalo Meat, I have to look for a recipe for that for Meatloaf unless I just
                 convert the meat , the cooking time I have to find out because Buffalo is
                 lean and 85% less fat...Your making me hungry !!!

                                                         Cheers...Joe...

I love noodles.  with butter and pepper and salt.

alj wrote:

Bet I could guess.  

Message me your guess   Please

I never used food for anything but fuel and seldom ate if I wasn't hungry, which turns out to be a good thing, because I am diabetic.

I dislike some foods. Whenever I tell someone I don't like sweet potatoes, they try to convince me that I really do. Or should. Because they do. I can't stand them. The sweet potatoes, not the people.

I've often noticed in circles of friends that someone will sometimes find a reason to mention what they have for breakfast. Then it goes around the circle with each person reciting what they routinely eat first thing in the morning.

"Nothing but coffee for me."
"Bacon and eggs every day."
"A bowl of oatmeal and a half a cantelope."

I don't bother to contribute because I don't think it's worth mentioning, and yet no one ever turns to me and says, "How about you, Al? What do you eat for breakfast?" Never. If it's so damned interesting, why don't they ask?

Yes, Al, food, music, films; everyone has a favourite and they want to share the joy with everyone else. They've never heard of one man's food is another man's poison!

Mashed potatoes and gravy.  Or a potato, any way shape or form.
People are entitled to thier likes and dislikes when it comes to food as well as anything else..  We have one rule about  food in our house and it is:  If you don't like it, don't eat  it, 
we have a garbage can in our house.

Good rule. I remember, as a child, having to stay at the table after everyone else left because I wouldn't eat my English peas. I do not eat them to this day. Mom loved them, and fed them to Lynn when she was very little. She still likes eating them cold, out of a can. (shudder). Different strokes.

This was a place where I totally agreed with Dr. Spock. He said that over a week, young children generally chose a balanced diet. I saw that haappening with all my kids.

Another titbit I got from him was "no spoon-feeding." Let them feed themselves as soon as possible and clean them up after. That's a practice that leads to them making wise choices and decisions about all sorts of thinngs.

Food as nutrition is the healthiest way; but many cultures have ingrained it as a societal function.

My baby was at the breast for 13 months but at the table with us from the time he could sit in the high chair, offered appropriate soft foods.  He ate the foods as they became age appropriate and I never bought those rotten, sugared baby jar foods.  I did blend some of our dinner in the blender occasionally if it was beyond the few teeth.  At that time in California there was a real yuppy health food kick so we ate no prepared foods and bought our stuff at organic markets.  My child's start in life was perfect and to this day, no food is off limits - in any country.

There was one exception for which I felt guilty until I realized that guilt was stupid.  We were shopping in the grocery and he was six years old.  He had seen popeye eating spinach out of a can and wanted some.  I knew it tasted nasty and refused to buy it but he went on about it until I planned an object lesson.

I prepared it for dinner.  One bite and he was done.  "You wanted it so bad, you will sit there till your plate is clean," this horrid mother said.  He sat there for way over an hour, silent, with tears pouring down his cheeks.  He would attempt to eat it and just could not.  It seemed to break his spirit for a long time afterward.

He never forgot the spinach and me either.

As a lot of you know, I was a hungry child.  There was no prepared food for people who were that poor.  The government surplus commodities kept me alive most of the time.  But, there were times that those were not available and we stole the wheat seed from the planters, boiled it for a very long time. 

This day, my David and I live on what we grow and preserve.  We buy some meat and rice and potatoes. 

Tonight's supper is a half of a boneless chicken breast dipped in egg and rolled in flour and anther dip in the egg and then the bread crumbs and drizzled with the dripping from the bacon that was fried for the fried corn.  The corn we grew and I canned as well as the jalapenos and the onions.  For sides we are having mashed turnips (grown here) beet greens (grown here) yellow rice (bought that mix), bread, large lima beans that I canned yesterday.

That canned spinach is an abomination to spinach everywhere.  My son would not eat any thing green until he was grown.  Now, he eats all everything, green or otherwise.   My daughter, like Alice, will not eat peas.  (dried peas can be used as sling shot weapons) . 
Love,
Betty

The first time I had fresh spinach, I was amazed. The first time I ate fresh spinach cooked with onions and garlic, I was doubly amazed.  That's now the only "lettuce" I use for salads with maybe some other lettuce leaves for variety.

I opened a can of spinach about a year ago.  It's still awful.  It should not be put in cans.

I envy you your talent for gardening, Betty.  I wish I were so inclined, but I'm not.  The best I can do is keeping my marigolds alive and some weed grass to keep my yard green.  About the only two things I know I do quite well are use my voice to read aloud or give presentations and to write.  I'm a pretty good teacher.  I have no skills with the ground whatsoever.

The Food Bank is my favorite charity. Small children cannot do for themselves when there's nothing to eat.

You are so right Al.  The children must be fed or their brains and bodies do not develop to maximum potential - and if there's one thing the world needs, it is some new leaders using their maximum potential.  We need healthy children.  Children are not numbers.

I have never felt we were overtaxed in this country; I have just felt that some of us are in comparison to others.  In the big scheme of things, whatever it takes to feed children I am up for.  We add a tax for putting sand back on the beach for the $millionaires to look at out their condo windows.  We ad a tax so they can drive their boats out the dredged canals. We could add a tax to be sure the children are fed.

I worked in an impoverished area for six years, just 40 minutes from extreme wealth.  We had a grant to feed our Haitian students lunch because they went home at lunch - and did not come back.  We felt if we fed them lunch, they would stay.

They still went home - with the lunch - to feed it to their whole family.  Our social workers discovered it.  Then we were adamant that we needed more grant money; but it ended.  We found the way to get them back to school was to offer a substantial snack in the afternoon - which they also took home.

They would not go to the food bank because they were willing to work and saw that as charity.  They knew other students had free lunch, so they took that as part of our education system - not charity.

Social workers found entire families starving because they were afraid to seek help because one of their family members was illegal and to get help for the legal ones might endanger the other one.  Their living conditions resembled those in Africa where they have those "donate" commercials.

There is much in this country that needs fixing and we have the resources.  We just don't have the right government structures to make it happen.  Everything is piecemeal and full of people falling through the cracks.  $4 billion is coming from somewhere to send back immigrant children.  Let's keep them and feed all the children.

Then, one fraudulent person becomes the celebrity of the day and services for all the needy are cut while the wealthy frauds collect their golden parachutes and re-employ each other to keep it in the family.