Comfort Food

I've been ill over the past few days with a rather nasty infection and spent a lot of time in bed. When I finally felt up to it, made myself a big pot of chicken soup in the crockpot. Now I don't know about you, but for me, homemade chicken soup is a definite comfort food. Guess it goes back to my childhood growing up on the farm and there being fresh chicken soup every day. Even better, in the summer, made with freshly picked vegetables. All lovingly made with my Baba's (grandmother's) hand.
(The picture is me in front my my Baba and Gido's farmhouse with my first car.)

Maybe that's what makes comfort food so special to us. It isn't the food itself, but the memories it invokes. Memories of our childhood, of being cared for, of being safe and protected. For some of us, perhaps it invokes memories of a special person in our lives who perhaps now is gone. It is well known that odour is a very powerful memory stimulant, so perhaps during the preparation, those odours invoke those special memories and feelings.

I would leave you with the recipe for chicken soup, but heaven knows, Baba never used a recipe for that. She had a few things she used a recipe for and one that all of us grandchildren loved was Sour Cream Chocolate Cake (only she usually make cupcakes out of it!)

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

1 ½ cup sugar
3 eggs
1 ½ cup sour cream
¾ tsp salt
2 ¼ cup flour
¾ cup cocoa
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda dissolved in
¾ cup hot water
1 ½ tsp vanilla

Mix well and turn into a greased pan. Bake at 325 F about 40 minutes or until toothpick in center of cake comes out clean. Alternatively, fill greased muffin tins 2/3 full and bake for about 25 to 30 minutes.

Enjoy! This recipe and more are the basis for Muffins and Megabytes our newest web initiative. How about sending me your favourite recipe?

I leave you with this wonderful quote from Robert Redford about another great comfort food: “Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better."