Five Friday Favorites – Comfort Food Edition

How did it get to be Friday? Somehow this week has really sped by me, despite the fact that it has felt eternal.  In addition, it’s been mostly cold with some snow and ice this week – real curl up under a blanket and hibernate weather.

And so in homage to the icy depths of winter and the soul-healing properties of good old fashioned comfort food, today’s Friday Favorites are some of our favorite comfort foods, most of which we have enjoyed in the space of the last week.

Perhaps that explains the stern discussion I had to have with my scale this morning.

I called in votes from both the Fab Hub and Kidzilla for this one and here are the results:

1. My Mom’s Lasagna. A few weeks ago, my Mom sent over a great big dish of homemade lasagna. And by “great big” I mean way too much for the Fab Hub, Zilla, and me to finish on our own in one meal. So we divided it into several Us-Sized meals and put them in the freezer. I can’t tell you how amazing it was to thaw that, pop it in the oven, and have ridiculously good homemade Italian food without lifting a finger. Mom makes it pretty much exactly the way you’d expect anybody’s Italian Grandmother to do it – which is exactly the way her Mom and all the rest before her did it. Plenty of sauce, ricotta and mozzarella cheeses…hot, oozy, delicious. And a little bit of spinach in there makes it all completely good for you and not a tush-buster at all.

2. Tuna Noodle Casserole in a Skillet. Tuna casserole is either a love or a hate thing for most people. And people have all kinds of reasons for loving or hating it – for some it’s comfort food, for others it is a stark reminder of a much leaner lifestyle. Around here, we like it just fine. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s cheap, and it’s one of those meals you can pretty much do anything you want with and it will turn out OK. Like peas? Toss them in. Hate peas? Skip it and use broccoli instead. Or don’t. Breadcrumbs on top? Sure. Or not. There are as many ways to make this as there are cooks to do so, but this week we did a skillet version because we wanted something quick. To give it a little interesting variety, I tossed the tuna into a skillet with some finely diced shallots, olive oil, salt and pepper, some red pepper flakes and maybe a bit of lemon juice. The noodles did their thing merrily in a nearby pot of boiling water. In another saucepan, I mixed up a batch of my “this is what I use instead of canned cream of whatever soup” magic. To that I added two kinds of cheddar cheese and tossed it all into the skillet with the tuna. Done in twenty minutes.

3. Cheese Steak. This one comes specifically from the Fab Hub. I had to give the Fab Hub a vote on this list; after all, the man does eat pretty much everything we make around here with great enthusiasm and he has grown to be quite the discerning food critic over the last few years. I picked this one because it struck me as the strangest. A cheese steak? Comfort food? Really? And then I thought about it… Meat good. Cheese good. Bread good. OK, we have a winner. I guess there really is something to be said for a nice hot cheese steak. And the Fab Hub lived in Philadelphia for a while, so he certainly knows what he’s looking for. Lucky for us, we have a pizza shop right down the road that makes a pretty wicked cheese steak for those nights when it just has to be takeout. But we’ve also done an awesome home version thanks to some of the best chipped steak on the planet, courtesy of our local butcher, and the fact that we live close enough to Philly to get Amoroso’s rolls right in our supermarket.

4. Macaroni and Cheese. If you’ve read here before, you probably already know that Macaroni and Cheese of any variety is a big hit in this family, mostly with the Fab Hub and Kidzilla. OK only with the Fab Hub and Kidzilla, but their love of mac and cheese runs so deep and sincere, it eclipses all. Zilla loves it so much that while I was pregnant with her, it was the only thing she would allow me to eat for about three and a half months. And it had to be very specific – Kraft Easy Mac in the little microwaveable bucket. While Zilla and her Fab Dad still love a good box version of Mac and Cheese for their date nights, they are at least willing to eat pretty much any other variety I put in front of them. In fact, when Fab Hub put in his five votes for favorite comfort foods, one was mac and cheese and another was chicken fettuccine alfredo. I see a definite pattern.

5. Swedish Meatballs. This one was a Kidzilla request – not at all something we make at home as a rule. In fact, I think this was my first go at it. But Kidzilla loves the Swedish meatballs they serve at her pre-school for lunch and she asked to make them at home. I dug around Pinterest and the Internet at large until I found a few contenders and decided on this version from Simply Recipes. It happens exactly the way the recipe says it will. We made one change and used only beef in our meatballs rather than the beef/pork mixture the recipe calls for. We just aren’t pork people here. The combination of spices was precisely the way every decent version of Swedish meatballs should be.

We learned something new with these, too. I actually didn’t know the part about serving them with lingonberry jam, but it sounded good to me! We found some at our local Disneyland supermarket and gave it a shot. Good call! Try it – the berry jam either in the sauce or on the side (or both) is a definite treat. Kidzilla loved the lingonberries and it prompted a little culinary lesson which allowed us to make use of my new favorite book, The Deluxe Food Lover’s Companion by Sharon Tyler Herbst and Ron Herbst. The next night we had a little bit of that lingonberry jam on top of vanilla ice cream with a few dark chocolate chips for dessert – fantastic!)

So, what was Kidzilla’s verdict? Well, my Little Gourmet was unimpressed at first because it was “light” and not “dark” like the pre-school cook’s version. In fact, Zilla was so bothered by this, she started to cry. Holy cow – what have I done to my child??? I suspect it was about having her little Self so excited about a homemade version of her favorite meatballs and then having them not look the way she expected. Luckily, I never mix my sour cream into a sauce of this type until the second I serve it and so the leftover sauce in the pan was still nice and dark – whew! When I showed her that, my Zilla was a happy girl. I did explain the difference to her, however, and she became quite willing to try the version with sour cream. At the end of the meal, I asked her which she preferred – Miss School Cook Meatballs or Mamma Meatballs. She thought for a second and said, “I like them both because they are different.” She went on to explain that the school version was the first way she knew and loved them, but our home version turned out to be a hit as well because she loved the sour cream and the lingonberry additions. Score!

Saturday’s weather looks just mild enough to head to the mountain for our first winter hiking excursion. Perhaps that will help shave a little bit of the comfort zone off my tuchus.

Have a happy weekend, everyone! And share your favorites for the week in the comments – we love to read them!