Comfort Food

As a kid, I felt like the term comfort food was frequently misapplied. I found nothing particularly comforting about mashed potatoes. Fried chicken and meatloaf weren't terrible, but the announcement that that was dinner didn't fill me with a sense of well-being or anything. I always thought comfort food should apply solely to Chocolate Cake or Apple Betty or maybe Ice Cream. Perhaps my penchant for chocolate cake and ice cream is the reason that, this New Year's, I've started out on a diet again.

Having recently read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, I am rethinking my approach to this year's gastronomical adventure. I don't want to fill up on low-fat this, and no-carb that. I would like, as he so elegantly puts it, to: "eat food, not too much, mostly plants." So, some of the things I plan to eat hardly look like diet food. They look a lot more like comfort food. I am following Weight Watchers Online, but mostly for how much to eat, not really for what to eat.

Anyhow, all of this brings me to this recipe that I simply must share with the world. Over the holidays, my step-mom gave my sister Shazam and me a stack of old cookbooks. So, I've been perusing them looking for things I'd like to try out. Well, I was paging through one called Italian Cooking Made Easy and I ran across this meatloaf recipe.

This meatloaf is comforting. It's delicious. It's not anything like the meatloaf I grew up eating. And, it's easy. So, without further ado:

Meat Loaf (Polpettone)

Italian Cooking Made Easy - Ted and Jean Kaufman

4 slices Bread, trimmed

1/2 c. Sherry wine

1 1/4 lb. Veal, chopped *

3/4 lb Beef, chopped *

2 Eggs

1 Onion, grated

1 clove Garlic, crushed *

1 Tbsp Parsley, minced

Salt and Pepper to taste

2 Tbsp Tomato Sauce

1 cup Tomato Sauce, seasoned

1. Soften the bread in wine.

2. Mix bread and everything else except for the 1 c. of tomato sauce in a big bowl. Blend well.

3. Grease a loaf pan (I used non-stick spray) and sprinkle it with bread crumbs.

4. Turn in the meat mixture.

5. Bake at 350 for about an hour and a half.

* The original recipe also called for ground pork, but I just couldn't find any. Blame the giant blizzard that hit Brooklyn last week. So I upped the amount of veal and beef. Also, they called for 1/2 a clove of garlic, but I just couldn't waste the other half of the clove! And I served it with oven fries, green beans and salad. They suggested spaghetti, but I'm just not that Italian.

A Rocky Start

I recognize that 2008 is only 6 days old, but I'm not wild about it so far.

In the late afternoon on the 2nd, the radiator stopped working. The boiler in my apartment building died. Of course, we didn't know it was dead. With the radiator working, our apartment is generally about 90 degrees. When we awoke the morning of the 3rd, it was about 65 degrees inside and about 13 outside. And there was no hot water.

The Tummy was not happy. He grumbled about us living in the 'hood while he ate his oatmeal.

I called our landlord when I got to work and left a message saying, "I just wanted to make sure that you knew that we had no heat or hot water this morning. Please call me back." I was cranky with my students, because the temperature in my classroom goes from about 55 degrees to about 110 degrees and back to about 55 by the end of the day. When my landlord called me back, she was all apologies. She very sweetly explained that she had been working all day to fix the problem and found out that she needed to replace the boiler. It would take a few days.

The Tummy suggested we not renew our lease at the end of the month. He does not like not being able to rely on heat and hot water.

Our landlord stopped by later in the evening and gave us a small portable electric heater. It was a very nice gesture, and it did a very nice job heating the square foot of space on all sides of it. The rest of the apartment got steadily colder. I baked snickerdoodles so that I had an excuse to turn the oven on.

The Tummy and I slept in sweats and slippers with 2 quilts and a down comforter on top of us. We cuddled.

Friday morning, it was colder in the apartment. I heated water on the stove to bathe and wash my hair. I grumbled all the way to school. I learned that I become quite grumpy when I can't get warm. I argued with the dean about bathroom passes.

Saturday, the apartment was colder.

The Tummy got up around 9:00 and I stayed in bed under the pile of blankets. Around 10:00, he got back in, because he said it was too cold to stay up. I didn't want to stay in the cold all day, but I felt so gross from not being able to take a real shower for 3 days that I didn't want to go out in public. (And before anybody suggests a cold shower, I'd like to point out that our cold water was about 33 degrees.) So I spent the day in sweats and slippers and a jacket, under an afghan, too cold to do anything but read and watch tv.

Around 7pm, we heard a hiss. The radiator had come back on! WE SURVIVED!!! Tonight, I'm actually sitting comfortably in a t-shirt! Hooray for heat!

Happy New Year!

Ok. I get it. It's not yet 2008. Technically, I'm two days early. But I'm a little bit OCD, and I have trouble starting New Year's Resolutions in the middle of the week. So, today I went back on Weight Watchers. Today, I cleaned the kitchen and went grocery shopping. And today, I'm posting in this here blog. The holidays were certainly fun, but I'm ready to get back to the real world and live better.

Among my resolutions this year is cooking at least 4 nights a week. (Living in Brooklyn makes it really tempting to not EVER cook.) And while I was in Michigan over the break, my sister M, who has a FABULOUS food blog here, kept telling me that I should start writing in my blog more and I should do food too! So, ok. I figure this will help me stay on track with the cooking and the weight loss.

So, without further ado.... the fish.



I'll admit it. I'm not really a fish person. The Tummy, however, really is. He can't get enough of it. The man loves his seafood and actually complains if we don't regularly have fish.


Now, a small aside before we get to the recipe: when I was growing up, I HATED fish. Part of this, it must be admitted, was because my mother seriously messes up cooking fish. I don't intend any disrespect here. There are lots of other things she makes quite well, but she does much better with things that take longer to cook. So fish was just not her thing. I am constantly suprised by fish recipes that are edible. I don't even expect them to be yummy.


That being said, HOLY COW WAS THIS YUMMY! It is Fish with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto, Feta and Black Olives. And it comes from, get this, my 500 Best Healthy Recipes cookbook! It is a New Year's Eve Eve MIRACLE! A healthy, yummy fish recipe! And not even that tricky to throw together. It's got some stuff in it that I don't always keep in the cupboard, but it's so good, I may have to start. I served the fish with a half cup of basmati rice, steamed asparagus and salad. This got an "MMMMM" and "Is there any more?" from the Tummy. I used Tilapia, but I think you could use cheaper fish and it would still be good. With the tilapia, it was delicious. The whole plate (including rice) is only 6 points on WW. The fish is only 4.

Fish with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto, Feta and Black Olives

1.5 lbs fish fillets
1 oz feta cheese, crumbled
2 Tbsp chopped black olives

Sauce
1/4 cup well-packed, chopped sun-dried tomatoes *
2 Tbsp chopped fresh basil
1.5 Tbsp olive oil
1.5 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1 Tbsp toasted pine nuts
1 tsp minced garlic
1/3 cup chicken stock


1. Sauce: Put tomatoes, basil, oil, Parmesan, pine nuts and garlic in food processor. Process until finely chopped. Then, with the machine running, gradually add the stock until the mixture is smooth.


2. Put fish in single layer in greased baking dish. Spread the sauce over the fish. Sprinkle with feta and chopped olives. Bake at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes per inch.


* Use dry sun-dried tomatoes. Soak them in boiling water about 15 minutes before chopping.