A Post On Toast

A while back I mentioned that one of my favorite foods is spaghetti. My friend, Kristen (usually I'd put a link here, but if you know her, you love her and if you don't, her blog is private so you won't get to), wanted to know what my other favorite comfort foods were. Of course, that turned into a list! And since we've had all the excitement around here we can handle this week, I decided to share with you my Top Five Favorite Comfort Foods.

Keep in mind, I love food. I think that's why I love to cook. I like to eat the food I've made and share it with the people around me. Recently, I saw a news segment on a woman who does a pseudo Super Suppers from her own kitchen...only better. I thought, "I want to do that!" Well, after I run my own personal shopping service (spend other people's money on great stuff!), host my own Food Network show (all the cooking, none of the clean-up), and run a grocery service for retirement centers (yes, I love the grocery store that much!). None of these will probably ever happen because I don't like to take risks and what if they aren't really good ideas in the first place? But back to my obsession with food. Everyone has a different idea of comfort food. The food that transports us back to a time when things were simpler and that gives us that warm, fuzzy feeling. The food that we picture around a big farmhouse table filled with loved ones laughing and just makes us feel better.

My Top Five Favorite Comfort Foods:
1. Spaghetti. Nothing exceptionally fancy--although Italian sausage and a little red wine make magic with a jarred spaghetti sauce. My favorite it Ragu Roasted Garlic. Top that with some Parmesan cheese, add a salad and some hot, crusty bread and it can make even the very worst of days seem just a little bit nicer.

2. My mom's homemade biscuits with my dad's gravy. Seriously, you would never let a canned biscuit touch your lips again.

3. Toast. I love it in all it's forms. A yummy San Francisco sourdough, buttered, and crisped up till it's nice and crunchy. A plain ole' piece of white bread with butter pooled on the top. A nice whole grain with melted cheese. When I was pregnant (both times) I ate cinnamon toast almost every night before I went to bed. I even bought myself this toaster a few years ago for my birthday. It has the unique ability to be both a toaster oven (to make cinnamon toast and toast with the butter applied before toasting) and a traditional pop-up toaster (for when you want to toast a bagel, a waffle, or a piece of toast in which you want to apply the butter after toasting). I could probably devote an entire list to just my Top Five Favorite Ways To Eat Toast. Hmmmm...

4. Beef Stroganoff. I'm not talking the fancy dutch-oven kind, I mean the kind with ground beef, a can of cream of mushroom, and sour cream. It sounds like a recipe from the 1950's (and it probably is), but it's soooo good. Especially with green beans.

5. Egg Custard Pie. Mmmmm. If you've never had one, you should try it sometime. It's an old-fashioned pie you don't see too many places anymore. My mom makes the most delicious egg custard pie on the planet. It's my dad's favorite pie and my mom made him one every year on his birthday. Until she figured out that my sister liked it, too, and then the rest of us got it more often. (I don't have one favorite dessert so my mom never really made one just for me.) I like it warm from the oven when the custard melts in your mouth, but it's just as good cold for breakfast, too.

What's your favorite comfort food?