COMFORT FOOD

August 2015

We all have our comfort foods.

here are mine...

#1: "Spin Blend" salad dressing made by The Silver Palate. (It used to be made by Hellman's and later by Best Foods). We have been using it in my family for nigh onto 60 years, i think! my mother always used it to make potato salad and coleslaw.

I MUST have it to spread on my bread for a ham sandwich. i also put a glop on the edge of my plate along with an equal sized glop of ketchup which i then mix together with the end of my knife. this is what i dip my burger into. (my son used to tell me this looks gross...i could have said a few things about his laundry, but i never did!)

#2: "Quik" chocolate powder. it used to come in this yellow and brown rectangular cardboard canister with a metal top and bottom. the top had an inset circular lid that you pried up with a spoon. over the years the package has changed to a yellow plastic canister that is like an elongated oval with a snap-on lid. (i'm still unsure of my acceptance of this new packaging).

what you do with "Quik" powder (besides adding it to milk) is to scoop up a nice bowl of vanilla ice cream and pour "Quik" all over it. then you let it sit for a bit to get the ice cream melting a bit and then you start stirring it. sometimes i like to stir it until it becomes chocolate ice cream. other times i like to eat it before it gets to that point. either way, it is very comforting to me.

#3: "Western" dressing. "Western" dressing is now made by Wish-bone, but it used to be made by Richelieu Foods. At a restaurant when i order a salad I ask for both ranch and french and mix them. I call that "FRANCH Dressing".

"Western" dressing is also very good instead of salsa on tacos or a taco salad if one isn't feeling too spicy.

#4: "ReaLemon" lemon juice. When i had a bad sore throat ( and i had a lot of them when i was a kid) my dad would take a cup of ReaLemon juice and a cup of water and a couple of tablespoons of sugar and heat that on the stove in a little saucepan for me. he poured some in a mug for me and told me to drink it as hot as i could stand it on my throat. there is nothing like hot lemonade to make a sore throat feel better!

#5: Dollar pancakes. my dad is also the one who taught me to make small silver-dollar-sized pancakes instead of great big ones. they were easier to turn over and always got done in the middle!

#6: Tea & Toast. and if i just plain didn't feel good, my dad's cure-all was tea and toast. so the very early morning of march 11, 1969, when i started having contractions, he was up with me and made me tea and toast. and i felt better, even though my husband was in boot camp and i was having our first baby!

So what are YOUR comfort foods?