Food That Is Comforting

I love comfort food.

I love meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, fried catfish, collard greens, chicken fried steak, fried chicken, sweet potatoes, cornbread, among others. Jello salad doesn't count.

There is something extremely suspicious about a person who doesn't like at least one type of comfort food. You look at that person just a bit differently after learning that.

Most of us can make it through life, most days, without needing comfort food. It's not exactly the most healthy of meal choices, definitely not low calorie or low sodium.

And yet...there are days.

Days when the skies are overcast or it's raining and cold.

Days when you wanted to stay in bed.

Days when everything is going wrong.

Days when you just want your Mama to come hold you close and whisper that it is all going to be okay.

That's the day for comfort food.

Comfort food is food that makes you think of the home that you grew up in, and the happy times.

It's a temporary blanket of serenity, those mashed potatoes, that roast beef. For the time it takes to eat a meal, you can imagine that you are back home, where ever that may be.

Whenever my mother made meatloaf, that was the very best thing EVER, as far as I was concerned. That meatloaf felt like LOVE, at least until the last crumb had been eaten.

All those deep fried, fatty foods also make me feel like I'm at my grandmother's house, sitting in the kitchen and looking out the window at the corn rustling in the wind. As a kid, I was also terrified that Bigfoot was living in that cornfield, but that's a story for another time.

Of course, after thinking about comfort food, I'm hungry for some.

What is YOUR favorite comfort food???