Day 3 - 276 -- Comfort Food

Today was fairly productive. I finished a couple of household chores that began yesterday and completed the grading for one assignment also begun yesterday. I was feeling fairly perky after lunch and I made a big pot of beef stew with dumplings for supper tonight and several other nights once it gets packaged and into the freezer -- tomorrow's job. Still feeling a bit off and had a slight fever today to add to the weariness of having microbes fighting it out with macrophages inside me -- feels like world war III -- a cytokine thing <sigh>. Things should continue to improve, but the meeting with the MD tomorrow will help me determine if things are going as expected.

Interestingly, having stew for supper brought a lot of comfort. It was my dad's recipe -- he dictated and I wrote it down -- he didn't use a recipe from a book. The dumplings are my mom's recipe -- copied from her recipe card from her recipe box. It tasted good today, but will be much better after it sits overnight and the flavours blend. There are many comfort foods that I cook, often on a Sunday, that come from my family. -- dad's meatloaf and scalloped tomatoes: Mom's date squares (matrimonial cake for my fellow Canadians), biscuits, noodle casserole and lazy cabbage roll casserole; and Grandma's oatmeal raisin cookies and white dinner rolls. There are many foods that I don't make that often, but they also bring memories of family meals. Isn't it interesting how a simple food item can carry so much of us within it. Such foods tell the stories of our lives. They should be shared with others to keep those stories circulating. I've often thought we needed a family recipe book with the memories that went along with each recipe. Even if we wrote down our own personal recipes and stories, that would be a gift for other family members.

The selection for today deals with a family dinner and a food involved. Enjoy!

Please pass the biscuits -- Jimmy Dean