With rain and wind again today, and more on the horizon, this week it just seems right to feature some good, old-fashioned comfort food–like the food my mom used to make for us when I was a kid.
In the winter, mom makes lots of soups, stews, roasts and beans. On Sundays, mom would put a roast into the oven before we’d go to church. It would be ready when we got home–the smell of the rich, fatty meat and earthy potatoes and carrots filling our nostrils as we walked through the door. We’d change clothes and sit down for our big meal of the day, which filled us up to the top and generally left us in drowsy food comas.
Mom used to make a lot of soup and bread on Sundays, too. She’d put the bread together and leave it to proof before going to church. When we returned, she’d get split pea or lentil soup started in her ancient pressure cooker. On those days, we’d have to wait in anticipation (being tortured by the yeasty, toasty warm smells coming from the baking bread) for a couple of hours before she’d pull her bread out of the oven. I never thought myself so lucky as when I bit into some of that hot bread fresh out of the oven, slathered with butter. We would dip it into the hot soup, flavored with rich, juicy ham hocks, and be safe in the knowledge that we had warm food in our bellies when it was cold and foreboding outside.
To this day–and it almost never fails–I sit in our pew at my little church on Sunday mornings and think–“oh, I want to make soup and bread today for dinner!” And I frequently do.
Mom has more recently embraced a “pot of beans” and says that she thinks there is nothing more comforting than knowing that you have a pot of beans on the stove. I can’t say I disagree. And there are lots of good things you can do with a big pot of beans, too!
Today, as I sit in my office looking outside at the wind and the rain and wondering if it’s ever going to stop, I’m embracing comfort cooking. I have beans soaking on the stove that are going to turn into a wonderful bowl of beans tonight, and chili and Cajun beans and rice down the road. I am featuring soup and bread on Sunday, too–but I’m featuring asparagus soup because asparagus are so yummy right now and there’s good comforting meals to be made out of that leftover ham, too!
So, Let’s get started, shall we?
Saturday: Keri’s Killer Pot of Beans, cornbread
Sunday: Alsatian-style asparagus soup, fresh bread
Monday: Cajun beans and rice, salad
Wednesday: Asparagus and ham, potatoes
Thursday: Keri’s Killer Meatloaf, Keri’s Killer Roast Potatoes, asparagus
Friday: Leftover Meatloaf Spaghetti, salad, bread
