Comfort food
At the moment I must work a lot, using a great deal of energy and urgently requiring comfort at intervals, so it’s no wonder I turn to the pantry and the fridge on a regular basis. Now much as I love chocolate, I can’t eat it all the time, or my stomach rebels. So I’ve had to come up with some alternatives for comfort food. Here are my best finds:
- Bananas. Love’em. In addition, they always make me think of the Librarian (from Discworld), and I am more than happy to share one trait with him.
- Grapes. This morning, I got some lovely sweet red grapes. I’ve already told my husband he’ll have to hurry if he wants even a small share.
- Buttermilk. This is not so much winter comfort food for me actually, but in the summer, nothing can beat a large glass of refreshing buttermilk.
- Nuts. Make that all kinds of nuts. Almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, peanuts, cashew nuts – okay, so I’m stopping now because I don’t want to torture all of you suffering from allergies any more. And although nuts contain quite a bit of fat, they are very healthy at the same time, making you feel smug while you eat them.
- A glass of milk. A different taste from buttermilk, and equally delicious.
- Corn and spelt crackers. If they sound like health food, it’s because they are – I get them from the local health food store. But my are they good! Each has a very distinctive taste, and I love both.
What kinds of comfort food do you like during spells of hard work?
– Rike Horstmann
I love bananas, grapes, and nuts (almonds and pistachios are my favorites). I also like to put grapes (red seedless) in ziploc bags in the freezer in the summer for a frozen treat.
However, those are my healthy comfort foods. When I’m not being so healthy, I grab good bread or crackers (never heard of spelt either) and cheese.
Heather, spelt is a sort of wheat – an old sort. It’s fairly popular here with people who are into whole foods. It has a distinctive, slightly nutty flavour and is used for bread (and crackers) and for pasta mostly.
Hey, I just looked it up at Wikipedia – it’s from the Bronze Age! Imagine!
Anyway, I like it very much indeed in bread and crackers, slightly less in pasta. My mom does an excellent casserole with whole spelt grains. If you want to try it, maybe you can start with some crackers from a health food store?
What could be more of a comfort food than chocolate ice cream? :)
When I’m being good, my comfort foods are yogurt and strawberries. When I’m bad, which is far more often than it should be, I go for the tortilla chips and cheese dip.
Rike, out of curiosity, what is spelt?
I second many of your choices (not buttermilk!). I generally get a handful of unsalted almonds, eat a banana, or have some other fruit like apple slices, pears or grapes. My go-to snack of tortilla chips was abandoned when I had to go on a reduced sodium diet. :::sigh::: Anyway, another quick treat for me to grab is low-fat yogurt.