Comfort Food

During the week before finals, I spent most of my spare time cooking large volumes of some of my favorite comfort foods. As a result, during finals week, I only had to dip into one or another of the plastic containers in my fridge or freezer for sustenance.

One of my regular fallbacks is the oatflake-zucchini loaf that I make following a recipe in my old and beloved copy of Laurel's Kitchen (the 1976 edition). The recipe uses an egg and cheese to bind the thing together and is decidedly old-school vegetarian. If you were dedicated to the effort of being vegan, you could use soy cheese and whole wheat flour or flax seed instead of the egg. I am not so dedicated. I often make the recipe in double volume. It keeps for many days and freezes well. I frequently add a squirt of ketchup before eating a slice.

I never said my comfort foods were haute cuisine. They are simple, cheap, easily reproducible, and reliably stored.

Another comfort meal that I quite like is a rather disgusting but extremely mouth-pleasing mound of mac-and-cheese boiled with a couple of pork sausages. Hey, I already admitted it was disgusting. Cut the raw sausages into five or six pieces and toss into the pot with the noodles and cook away. After draining, you can add the cheese and liquid (milk, butter, water, whatever floats your boat) into the same pot and mix well. There! Ready for apportioning into plastic containers for freezing. Not even close to vegetarian and not even remotely apologetic for it.

I also make a tasty bolognese sauce for spaghetti using ground beef, canned tomatoes, tomato paste, and spices. I don't otherwise eat beef in any form but this stuff can be made in very large quantities and frozen for future use. One night of cooking and I can eat for a week. It's not like the mac-and-cheese-and-sausage potage that is reserved only for my own furtive late-night meals. I've proudly served the bolognese spaghetti to guests.

A comfort meal that I regularly make is rigidly vegan. Take half an onion, slice thinly, sauté in olive oil until nearly clear. Add salt and black pepper while the onion is cooking. Finely cube 1/2 of a package of extra firm tofu (ignore the less firm varieties, they are gross). Put the other unused half of the tofu cube in a large container filled with enough water to cover it; it will keep for several days. Add the cubes of tofu to the onions. Brown slowly but thoroughly. Add red chili pepper flakes. Be liberal! Live a little! Give that chili pepper container another shake or two! Once the tofu cubes are nicely browned, add lots and lots of spinach. At least a half pound, washed, dried, de-stemmed, or just handfuls of the stuff from the pre-washed packages. Stir well, turn off the heat then cover, allowing the spinach to wilt. Serve with brown rice. A vegan's dream meal. Full of fiber and vitamins and none of those nasty animal products. Sadly, this meal doesn't store well (the rice can be made in advance in bulk quantities, however). But it is so cheap and easy to make that I keep it in regular rotation.

Despite making this meal almost once a week, I will never give up butter, yogurt, honey, eggs, and cheese. We humans are omnivores after all. But there's certainly no need to eat meat with every meal. All foods in moderation, all foods enjoyed.

Finally, the comfort food that I make on a regular basis, not just during the last week of classes, is a big pot of either black or pinto beans. I don't bother with soaking them; that is a waste of time and flavor (see this guy for one opinion on the matter). I cook them with no spices or fat of any kind, not even salt. This way I can use them in a variety of preparations and flavor them to taste as the dish requires: beans and scrambled eggs, tomatoes, and cheese; or beans sautéed with small pieces of chicken then topped with fresh mango. Yum.