comfort food

What's the proper definition of comfort food? When I see those two words, the conjured up images are of mac and cheese, French onion soup, fettuccine alfredo. Warm, very warm and very cheesy. Possibly eaten with a spoon.

But those are not my comfort foods. I love cheese, but rarely use anything other than grated parmesan in my cooking. (I do use a lot of grated parmesan.) Pasta? Strictly for Sunday dinners. Never with heavy cream. So what's my comfort food?

It's seasonally determined, that's for sure. Summer is an entirely different kettle of fish. Let's stay with winter for now: warm, then. The food has to be warm. That, of course, narrows it down not at all. Unfussy! It needs to be unfussy, eaten with a spoon or fork, knife not necessary!

And did I mention warm?

You can see why hearty soups tend to win out here at the farmette. Taking out my big, well used and still very yellow Le Creuset pot is the first step toward that feeling of warmth in your gut. Anything cooked in that pot is comforting and of course, the smells are going to be fantastic. It's a given. There isn't a week in the winter season when I do not cook up two days worth of comfort in that pot.

But what? The worst thing that can happen to your menus is that you get stuck in the old favorites. Indeed, it seems I am always cooking our own version of chili (we add chicken brats... don't even ask!). Or a red lentil soup. Or a bean and kale soup with grated parmesan (see what I mean about the parmesan?).

So how do you save yourself from being trapped in the tried and true? Well now, here's an easy solution: do as I told you some months back. Subscribe to foodie newsletters and enjoy their weekly ramblings on what to cook right now, say for a "gaggle of gays" over in LA (that's in this week's newsletter of the Amateur Gourmet), or what soup to add to your repertoire (that's over at the Smitten Kitchen of Deb Perelman) when, like me, you're searching for new and delicious comfort foods.

This introduction is quite related to my morning. After breakfast, with this guy...





... I spend a cozy set of hours revamping my menu for next week. I'll be trying for a whole week of new stuff. Comfort foods, because, well, it's January and the daylight hours aren't quite long enough to catch us up to Tampa.


And here's another bit of news (if you can call "deciding on new foods" news): I'm changing Ocean's name! At some important moment this month, The Other Side of Ocean will become... something else. I am somewhat committed to keeping the word Ocean in the new banner because, well, the other day I again ran into an older Ocean reader who always greets me in the grocery store with the words "Hi, Ocean," possibly because he doesn't remember my name, but most likely because he so associates me with Ocean. But, "the other side" stuff has to go. I came up with that name in five minutes, back in 2004, because it seemed somehow fitting: for everyone here, in America, it seems that I come from over there, on the other side, and for everyone there, say, in Poland, I seem to come from here. Profound, right? Needless to say, I haven't really liked it much since. It always sounds to me like a terribly dramatic love story, the kind you find in grocery stores, written by someone with a fake name.

I have no idea what name to take on (keeping Ocean does limit choices), nor what consequences this will have for anything, but hey, you can still call me Ocean when you run into me at the store! Just please, not "The Other Side of the Ocean!" I mean, what was I thinking?!


In the afternoon (and it is a very cold, if sunny afternoon!)...


 



... I pick up Snowdrop. (Did I mention that it is a beautifully sunny day?)






(I had given her a snow globe of a Degas dancer; in sunshine, the golden flakes are truly magical!)






Today she is up for one of my favorite games: we sit across the table from each other and we take turns telling something that happened to us on this day. I try to stick to truthful vignettes, but over time and after many, many rounds, her recounts stray toward the fantastical. Here, she is explaining that she had to go to work; there were many phone calls and many discussions but eventually, it appears that her work forces her to travel to Australia, where she met up with her daddy (who does, in fact, like travel to Australia) and they spent some time taking care of a handful of koalas. Curiously, the word "like" has crept into these daily recounts. I never use it. I doubt that anyone at home uses it. Yet there it is:  in the week of Australia, I caught sight of daddy and then, like, we rushed quickly to the house... The delay in her narrative, just a hint of swagger, the litter of "likes" -- where did all this grown up patter come from? She is four now... I'll never know. I just smile. And smile.







(Random photo, taken while rinsing the dishes: the sunlight in the late afternoon touches the mishmash bouquet by the kitchen sink. Magnificent!)





Ocean Ripples? Ocean Stories? That's misleading. That Place Across the Ocean? An Ocean Away? This is going to be tough!