Ann Althouse Has Me Rhapsodizing...

about comfort food. What's your favorite comfort food?

Here's what I wrote over on Ann's blog:

Okay, I know that I'm from the Midwest and [I'm] unsophisticated. But, even though I really love pasta, it's not my idea of "comfort food." [The blogger of the post to which Althouse linked called pasta a comfort food.]

Vegetable soup on its first reheating is my ideal comfort food when the temperatures start to dip. (My wife makes the best in the world. I even bragged on her vegetable soup in a recent sermon. Just for the record, I make the worst in the world!)

Meatloaf is another great comfort food, although I'm amazed by the fact that far fewer cooks seem able to make meatloaf than think they can. Even restaurants can't seem to get this right. Recently, one of my favorite chains featuring comfort foods, Bob Evans, messed up their meat loaf by adding sausage. Yuck!

Then there's the even simpler comfort fare of tomato soup with ham sandwiches. My family used to eat this comfort meal when I was a kid. On Sunday nights, after we'd returned from a family jaunt to my paternal grandparents' restaurant and home in Bellefontaine, it was the perfect comfort capper to the weekend.

We'd run by a place in Columbus called Isaly's, known for its dairy products, especially its ice creams. But they also had a deli. My folks would buy two pounds of chipped ham and a gallon of Isaly's chocolate milk. We went home, heated up some tomato soup, make our sandwiches, and....AHHHH! Pure comfort!

To this day, my wife and I love to comfort ourselves with ham sandwiches and tomato soup. (No chocolate milk though. I've learned I'm allergic to milk.)

Another comfort food we love in the autumn and winter is what in Columbus we called, Johnny Marzetti, named for the restaurant and salad-dressing maker there. In northwest Ohio, where we lived for six years, they called it Goulash, although it was made slightly differently. Noodles, tomatoes, ground beef, green peppers, onions, celery, and garlic. It is to die for!

I mentioned my Grandmother Daniels earlier. She was a fantastic "comfort" cook, the reason that people came to what was referred to as my grandfather's restaurants. Whenever we went for a visit, she fixed beef and noodles for my father--it was great--and pumpkin pie for me.

Ah, gastronomic memories! With such a love of food, how do I keep my svelte figure?