You're in My Vacation Home Kitchen. Yeah, I'm wearing a driver's cap with Mickey Mouse ears. Jealous?
As if fate needed to remind me that there is balance in life, I was lucky enough to spend a week in sunny Florida … followed by a week with a cold once I was back home. This added up to two weeks without much time in the kitchen.
While in Florida, we rented a vacation home, complete with a hot tub, pool, and, of course, a large kitchen. Funny how your favorite room in the house is no longer where you want to spend your time once you can see a hot tub out the window, though. So we instead relied on easy meals and my favorite pizza place in Orlando, Giordano’s, for Chicago-style stuffed pizzas with spinach, broccoli, garlic and olives. Yum. Let’s go back right now.
The week following paradise was spent in the middle of a snowstorm back in Minneapolis, fighting off colds. When I’m ill, I immediately want lots of fresh fruit. And I drink an unreasonable amount of mint tea. After that, though, all signs of my normal eating habits are dead to me, as I can barely muster the energy to make it to the grocery store, much less cook.
I’m not proud of my comfort-food habits. And when you’re not proud of something you do, it’s important to come up with a cute name to make yourself feel better about it. So I call my comfort food Bachelor Chow. It started as a joke when my husband was out of town for work. Then it became delicious. Here’s how you can make your own:
Bachelor Chow
- Locate pride. Shoot it in the face. You can’t have pride tonight. You need comfort food.
- Bake one Totino’s pizza. (On a pizza stone, preferably. And in the oven, not the microwave. You’re ill, not an idiot.)
- Prepare one package of Kraft Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese. (If you get the regular kind with the powder, so help me, you’re never getting better.)
- Eat both things. Together. I don’t care how you do it — pile the macaroni on top of the pizza, scoop some on with each bite, make a burrito — but you need the two things together. Otherwise you’re just eating pizza with macaroni and cheese on the side, and that’s disgusting. You disgust me.
And that’s how I get better. That’s my secret recipe. As in, I don’t tell anyone this. I’ll deny it later. I’m ashamed already. Really, it was the fruit and tea that healed me. Look, I told you in the beginning that I was both gourmet and tacky. This is just between you and me.
There. I shared mine. What’s your comfort-food confession? Leave a comment. Your silence will only lead me to eat more Bachelor Chow.
You're In My Kitchen 
I make my mom’s tuna noodle casserole (or hot dish, for you Minnesotans. Do you say hot dish now?) when Cory’s out of town.
Tuna. Egg noodles. Cream of mushroom soup. Cheddar cheese.
I never buy canned soup or tuna, and I certainly never eat any of these items together. Until Cory leaves and I’m baching it up. Then they’re delicious.
Ooh. Casserole. Or hot dish. That’s what they call it here. I was mocked for not knowing what it meant. Hot dish. Seems so generic. You’re just saying the temperature and the container.
Ok, after reading this one I almost ran to the kitchen to make the mac and cheese instantly. As it so happens, Shawn is making mac and cheese tonight anyways, and I always have Totino’s pizza’s around for my own comfort food. I usually end up cutting up green and black olives and adding extra cheese. I use a lot of wasabi when I’m sick too.
I’m proud of you for having these things ready to go. You never know when you need to eat some comfort.
It’s the mac and cheese in a box. Something about it. I must eat it once every two months.
Fun Fact: Kraft used to call the Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese “family size.” But I’d eat the entire thing for lunch no problem. Am I a family, Kraft? No. I am not. Does America overeat, Kraft? Yes. It does. Good for you for changing the name.
My comfort food is those rectangular hashbrown paddies. I ate a lot of those back in HS when I had mono…and ever since then, when I’m not feeling good, I fry one or two of those up on the stove and nom away to feeling better.
If I don’t have any of those in the freezer, I’ll make an entire can of corned beef hash, mixing in three eggs before I’m done, and eat the whole thing. I’m so fully of happy goodness that I fall back asleep and don’t need to eat the rest of the day.
I. Love. Hash. Browns.
I will confirm this. Cavan does indeed LOVE his hashbrowns. I once saw him eat a heaping plateful!
Then you MUST try Hashbrown Casserole. Warm cheesy deliciousness with a buttery cornflake topping. It’s like a hug
I want that. Now. What else is in it?
1 (2 pound) package frozen hash brown potatoes, thawed
1/2 cup melted butter
1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 (8 ounce) container sour cream
1/2 cup chopped onions
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 cups crushed cornflakes cereal
1/4 cup melted butter
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a large bowl, combine hash browns, 1/2 cup melted butter, cream of chicken soup, sour cream, chopped onion, Cheddar cheese, salt and pepper. Place mixture in a 3 quart casserole dish.
In a medium saucepan over medium heat, saute cornflakes in 1/4 cup melted butter, and sprinkle the mixture over the top of the casserole.
Bake covered in preheated oven for 40 minutes.
I forgot to add that you can make it vegetarian by substituting cream of mushroom soup for the cream of chicken. Also, the 2 cups of cheddar cheese is only a suggestion. If 2 is good then 3 is better!
Thanks, Tammy!
Hilarious! Do you like the Cici’s mac&cheese pizza or must it be made at home?
I love all potatoes and when I’m sick my hubby knows he better go get KFC mashed potatoes. Im sure it’s a month’s worth of sodium & fat which is probably why it’s healing!
I’ve had their pizza, but I didn’t love it. But the circus of kids around me may have just made me feel bad.
I crave Oregon Chai tea when I’m sick, that brand only (they also use this kind at Starbucks). I cut out sugar cereal from my diet several years ago, but when I am sick I want nothing but a big family sized box of Flintstones Chocolate Pebbles cereal.
Yum. Chai. Just like the strange amounts of mint tea I go through when sick.
So Ramée is a delicate balance of Top Ramen, cooked in the finest boiling tap water. Add frozen vegetables, preferably a medley. If you have to go with just peas and corn, I suppose that will work too. You can cook this in the same tap water to get that wonderful starchy flavor, or in a pot on its own.
Now this next step is really important: When before you slice the cold cuts, make sure they are of the fatty variety. Salami, pastrami, etc.
Place both vegetable and cold cuts into the Ramée (flavor packet already added of course).
WAIT! You’re not done! Shred some cheese, or use shredded cheese, and stir in until gooey.
Serve in a bowl with a fork and preferably and Olympia grenade bottled beer.
Ramée!!
You taught me something. I have never heard of this Ramée. I am glad you said Top Ramen, and not just Ramen, because Top Ramen is the only kind I eat.
I am not being sarcastic. Top Ramen, oriental flavor, is the only vegetarian kind I have been able to find. Bottom-Shelf Ramen, oriental flavor, has beef flavoring.
Nutella. Right out of the jar, with a spoon (or even my finger).
That, and a Whiskey. And a large carrot, no joke.
Explain the large carrot.
Large carrots because the little baby carrots freak me out (really? do they grow in that shape?) and remind me of my Mother’s HORRIBLE beef stew. But a large carrot, with all it’s crunchy goodness, is great.
I get it. Baby corn kind of frightens me. Just because it’s a baby, we eat the entire cob? That seems reckless. I was wrong to question you. Anyone who counts whiskey as comfort food is trustworthy.
At first I thought you meant that fresh fruit and tea was comfort food but then I read on. We can be friends again.
I actually keep Totino’s and mac n’ cheese around just for comfort food but I have never combined them, much to my everlasting shame. I do love the cheese powder though. The Kraft cheese explosion boxes have twice the unnatural but delicious powder. mmm
Now send me some Serenity Now from Gong Fu. It’s better than what I can find here.
OK … you don’t have to send me tea.
When I’m sick, I like garlic toast made with obscene amounts of garlic salt. I HATE not being able to taste and that seems to over power even the worst colds and stuffy noses. When I am not sick, my comfort food is chocolate chips melted with a spoon full of peanut butter. Mmmm.
Peanut butter. I’ve stopped buying it. I realized I had a problem. But then I just started making my own … and I have added chocolate to it!
It all depends…for a cold, I usually just sit there, miserable, drinking ginger ale, eating cheese and crackers, and trying to sip chamomile tea all the while complaining its too hot even when its room temperature.
Now when I’ve had a terrible day, or if it’s something worse than a cold but not quite the flu, I go for a selection of fried chicken from the nearest Bojangles’…there is nothing that an inordinate amount of fried chicken with a huge sweet tea and ‘fixin’s’ won’t cure, well, except heart failure.
I have never heard of Bojangles’. I think you made it up.
TOT DISH! That would be tater tot hot dish. Or simply….tots by themselves. Superbly delicious little cylindrical crispy potato delights.
I don’t trust people who don’t love carbs.
Cheezits and cinnamon applesauce as a dip. Must be cheezits, plain applesauce will not do but I can add my own cassia cinnamon if plain is all I have. And any crackers slightly brown or burned have my name on them–beware.
This is a new one. The brown Cheez-Its I get. But I’ve never heard of the applesauce dip. Do you eat cheese with your apple pie? I’ve never done that either. But, again, I am with you on the Cheez-Its.
I have tried cheese with my famous apple pie–ask Michelle and Aaron—and if it is a sharper cheddar, it IS very good. I would love to make you one sometime when you two venture down to the Big O. :o)
Deal! We hope to be there this summer!
Pingback: Casualties in the kitchen « You're In My Kitchen
I have “beer.” The recipe is very simple.
1. Go to liquor store.
2. Purchase beer.
3. ????
4. Profit!
I enjoy Step 3. But I seem to follow it up with Step 1 rather than Step 4. It’s a terrible cycle.
I’ll go for anything with cheese in it. Melty, delicious cheese. If I’ma bachelor it up for the weekend, it’s gotta be tuna melts served over a huge pile of steak fries. Good lord, I haven’t done that in years… lousy diet and exercise. I even have this crazy-elaborate recipe for tuna melts, but sadly my panini maker (aka, the Foreman Grill) committed suicide back in ’07. I miss that little fella.
The proper comfort food depends on the reason why comfort is needed. For instance, after a bad day it is essential to consume nachos and a dirty gin martini. When I have the flu, I need ginger ale and soup (cliche I know). When I have a cold, I need whiskey (preferably in a manhattan) and anything delivery. When I am stressed out, nachos and a glass of wine.
Pingback: Where I’ve been and what I ate | You're In My Kitchen
Pingback: Bachelor Weekend, and why you need Bacon Salt | You're In My Kitchen
Pingback: Thanksgiving Side-Dish Face-Off: What made the cut | You're In My Kitchen