Comfort Food Secrets: Why Fall Recipes Feel and Taste Extra Good

Hey everybody.

Welcome to another episode of Family Tree Food and Stories.

I'm Nancy May, and I am here with my co-host, Sylvia.

Lovely.

Hello?

Hey, Sylvia.

Sorry I'm, I've got a taste of like too much coffee this morning.

So talking about what we're talking about, that sounds redundant, but, , we

are talking this week about comfort foods and I guess coffee is a

comfort food too, Right, Food and experiences and favorites that we adopt

as part of the human instinct is all part of the wintertime coming along.

And it's a lot more than just harvest because we talked about harvest

as be harvest before, but comfort foods, I wanna make this clear,

they are more about the winter time.

Our experience of the fall.

There's a lot of sensory perception that goes on with comfort foods,

we store our nuts for winter, don't we?

We do store our nuts for winters under or winter under the sweaters.

And the interesting thing, and Sylvia, you and I have talked about this,

is that food uses all of the senses.

So the senses and the fallen comfort foods, I think really bring a more

rich experience to that whole thing.

Yeah., And just think about it.

Think about site.

What do you see?

Oh my gosh.

in Kentucky, it's a big blue sky with a high sun, no, humidity, so it's

a little bit of a chill in the air.

And so that's a site.

How about all those pumpkins?

And people are decorating now for Halloween more than they ever did.

, There's sound.

I think of sizzling, like things kind of simmering and all of that.

What about you?

Any, sounds that come to mind?

Oh , I would say the timer.

On the kitchen oven,

There you go.

Because you finally turn it on.

Yeah.

right In the summertime you're grilling, but it's in the winter.

Who wants to really cook indoors in?

, In the summertime, it's just too much.

So it's the heat off the stove when you open the oven door and that

heat comes on you when it's done.

I don't know about you, but I leave my oven door open just a

little bit to feel that warm heat and it just feels good, right?

And how about feeling, I think of a warm cup in your hands.

, Sitting with a blanket around you, maybe out on a patio, on a really nice day.

that's a feeling.

Hot cocoa.

And how about taste?

Oh, yeah.

Oh yeah.

Taste.

Taste rich.

Something rich, , like a stew or a pumpkin pie.

Something that , probably in many ways shouldn't even eat it.

But it's so good.

And that taste is just overpoweringly good.

yeah, I have, I have this sneaky little, well, I'll call it confession.

Mm-hmm.

year around this?

Well, it's just before this time.

The, , Costco and Sam's Club and all the other places have , these fruitcake logs.

Fruitcake is, I mean, okay, call me a fruitcake nut, but fruitcake is

one of my comfort foods, and I will buy a bunch of them and I'll store

them in the pantry or in a closet.

And about this time of year, I'll think, Hmm, I want a little slice off that log.

So I've got last year's fruitcake this year.

I have a question about fruit cake.

Can you keep it for a long time because it's the way it's made

or does it, does it ever go bad?

I don't think it ever goes bad.

I think fruitcake, we might find fruitcake in one of those a hundred

thousand year old barrels somewhere like in, I don't know, in Rome,

Ah, We need to look into that for the holidays.

And then, then finally there's smell,

smell.

some people say it's the best smell, actually keeps you safe

'cause you smell bad food, right?

You can smell it and they say you use your senses of smell, but

smelling, just smell of fall.

There's a mustiness in the air and I'm sure it's the leaves falling

and there's a scientific explanation for it, but it's kind of that.

Smell.

Smell.

And then there's the food.

And I love walking in the neighborhood in the fall.

near smell the cooking coming from the kitchens and you wanna

go up and bang on the door.

Can I come in and eat that?

'cause it smells so good.

the uninvited guest.

Guess who's coming to dinner in a different way.

But it's also about history.

, The history from , immigrant families, that didn't have the ability to always.

store foods for long periods of times, , the Italians couldn't get

their grapes from the old country when they came over to the US here.

And so trying to find new traditions, , Sunday sauce, which I think was

probably always a big deal over in Italy, but I'm not sure since

I'm not Italian, but I do Manja.

Manja, so I guess that makes me part of Italian.

Oh, and I don't know if you ever saw this commercial as a kid.

On Wednesdays, you'd see this commercial sort of nostalgic look of this kid

that's running through the streets of New York and down the alleys to get home.

And you see his grandmother or mother leaning out the

window , of the alleys with the.

The wash lined up, you know, outside of the windows and the woman is yelling

Anthony, it's Prince Spaghetti Day.

So Wednesday was Anthony Prince Spaghetti Day in the New York area.

But, that brings a sense of nostalgia, just warmth all around this time of year.

And you've got all sorts of things going on in Appalachia to stretch

the harvest with corns and beans and potato stews and whatnot.

Right.

And they, found this stuff in the wild and like I still to this day don't

know how my grandmother found grapes to make that grape juice that my

brother and I would run to the cellar.

' cause she had just jars and jars of it.

So it was preserved, but it was so good and somehow she did it.

But she got by without me ever asking her how she did it.

Don't you just regret that

sometimes?

do, I really do, , and I know other people who talk about recipes

that are lost, and those recipes are actually referred to sometimes

as ghost recipes, which are, or ghost recipes, I should pronounce

that more correctly on a podcast.

But that's right up our alley of what Family tree, food and story is all about

a simple definition these are the old recipes that we got somewhere along the

line, but we forgot where they weren't like Halloween stuff, but , grandma kind

of did this, but you're not sure if it came from grandma or maybe some other

person that had something along the way.

But you know about ghost recipes as well, right?

Yeah.

You know, , it's interesting though, if you Google Ghost, ghost.

Ghost food, something like that.

What you get are cookies shaped in the form of ghosts and all that.

So it's reminiscence of what we're gonna be talking about at

the end of the month of October.

But,, ghost recipes are when you reach back to find them.

I think you had found something as like, grandma's apple butter or Chow Chow.

Ah, you know what, that is something that's making a comeback.

You know what that is, Nancy?

I saw it recently at a farmer's market down here and I bought

it, but I don't know what it is.

I have to confess, I bought something in a jar that looks interesting,

but I don't know what it is.

And don't know how it got its name.

Chow Chow.

That's the other thing you get is the chow dog.

So anyway, I finally found it though.

It's a veggie relish.

Sweet and tangy, and it has green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and peppers.

And it's making a comeback with young people who we've talked about before.

Born after 1990 or 29?

1, 1, 1, 9, 9 7. Okay.

I'll get, get in the right century.

But they are young and they are remaking all these old recipes and

it is really kind of a cool thing, And some upscale restaurants in

the south are actually serving it.

Maybe even with a twist, , with different kinds of veggies, but after some of the

theme that we tout is that you reach back and young people are reaching back.

Uh, there's something missing in their lives and they're

reaching back to food and recipes.

It's interesting, see what's happening on front.

It's very heartwarming, , , to know that people care enough about

the history of foods or recipes and where they all came from.

And I know at one point I had mentioned to you that I love

going into these old antique or sort of junk shops and looking at.

If they have them , old recipes from, , old cookbooks and inevitably

there's the old church cookbooks or the Women's Circle or something else.

And.

I have to say they're fun to look at, but quite frankly, there's a lot of

the same from book to book to book to book, and they were done as fundraisers.

I dunno if people understand that, but in order to raise money for a

church or a club or something, people would submit their family recipes

or a recipe that they like, and then they'd sell advertisements in these

little s spiral bound books typically.

and then sell them from kind of like a Tupperware party for, for recipes.

But the similarity right across the board from different regions of the country

in these books is really fascinating.

a friend of mine had a recipe years back at a party that she did

a Christmas party and said, Mary.

Mary Elroy up in Connecticut and,, Mary Elroy Lou, I should, clarify that.

And I said, this recipe is delicious.

It was like a, an appetizer kind like a, an egg kind of thing.

And I said, what is it?

She goes, oh, it's a recipe that my mom had from her church cookbook.

It was amazing and was so good and so elegant.

And so , basically, real quick.

You take a bowl and you do a bunch of chopped onions and you line the

bowl with a bunch of chopped onions and then you you make a, a very.

Dry egg salad and you put that in it.

So now the eggs are sort of packed in there, really tight.

I always added a little different thing to it.

I a little bit of curry to it to give it a zip, and then you've refrigerator

it really tight and then you unmold it.

Basically it's a teacup or something.

And then you cover that mold with sour cream.

Like a whipped sour cream.

And then you add, well, we added, , I'm trying to think of

the name of Flying Fish Row.

So like caviar, cheap caviar on the outside.

And it's so elegant and so delicious, and voila, it came from a church recipe.

Go figure,

. Hey, there's , an interesting phenomenon.

Maybe I'm just kind of like picking something out of the

air here, but help me with this.

You see in a lot of those old cookbooks, you see a lot of, well, fruit cake.

You mentioned fruit cake.

Well, what about things like prune cake?

I never hear of prune

never heard of prune cake.

It's just kind of, I don't know why those kind of things were so prominent, although

maybe prunes were just very available

They're just plums that are kind of stewed.

Plums, I guess, are the same thing as prunes and dried out

Well, I think maybe they probably keep longer or something.

I, I remember these are more sturdy cakes.

It's like rum cake and things like that, and maybe they just last

longer and people just had more time.

I also think a lot of these prune cake things, and I'd love to hear from people

about this, take a little longer than the box and then, , add in, eggs or whatever.

These are like scratch cakes.

There's a lot of those scratch foods and those cookbooks,

maybe we'll get back to that.

they're not that difficult to do.

The other, this is slightly

off subject, right?

Well, slightly off subject, but it's still dealing with comfort

foods because we talk pancakes.

Pancakes are a comfort food, right?

So pancakes on a cold winter morning, and , my husband one day said.

Not too long ago, let's make pancakes.

He said, well, I gotta go out and get the box.

Like, no, you don't need the box.

My mom never made pancakes from a box.

I shouldn't say she never made 'em from a box.

And he said, you can make pancakes from scratch.

And I said, yes.

It's not that difficult.

So sure enough, we made pancakes from scratch.

He's like,

I do think, I do think it's a comfort food thing.

I think it takes, takes more time than getting that box.

And I think we're in the mood.

Maybe it's that.

All that comfort food stuff that you were talking about and the science of it.

, We are more likely to stand over a stove and make things

from scratch than we are today.

And I think that's making a comeback.

And, you know, I think this is a great idea, by the way, doing ghost suppers

for as the, as the,, native Americans did.

They did ghost suppers in honor of their ancestors.

Is that cool?

I like that one.

It's, not quite the day of the dead tradition, but this is really bringing

back a recipe that hadn't been used in a long time to honor grandma

or grandpa or even mom or dad.

Yeah.

You know, in honor of them.

, That's such a cool idea.

Hey, let's start a thing.

Let's start a movement.

we are gonna, we are gonna recommend that everybody does a ghost recipe, supper,

or dinner with friends and family.

Well, it doesn't even need to be family.

Everybody brings a dish that was in their family somewhere

that maybe got lost or forgotten about, and just bring it all back.

Let's do it.

Absolutely, Bonnie Manning.

in our group had mentioned, , one of her comfort foods was

popovers and Yorkshire Pudding.

oh my God.

I love both.

My mom used to do Yorkshire Pudding occasionally when we were kids because

her parents came over from the uk, so that's kind of flat popover, so I

would call it a little bit more dense,

Yeah, there's a bunch of those.

There's just a bunch of those.

my 8-year-old granddaughter.

I love this one.

I said to her one day, I said, what's your fall comfort food?

Burnt marshmallows.

Oh, my favorite, right?

Oh my

And then , I said, oh, but you don't eat 'em, do you?

Oh yeah.

That's the best part.

And I cringe because you that it's that that kind of food is supposed to be not

good for you.

But anyway,

like you said, the hot dog at the park, just

and.

Given.

Yeah, given your Girl Scout background, that's what she wrote me an essay about

what she missed most about summer.

It was Girl Scout Camp in the fire outdoor fire where they did marshmallows

Oh, I love that.

Oh,

and s'mores, that kind of thing.

And one of my personal favorites is my brother-in-law, . John Kerry who said he,

, thought back of his wife Sandy, who's my husband's sister, , about her enchiladas.

, Sandy died about four or five years ago, an untimely death.

So, , he's remembering her with that.

And so that was, that was a good one too.

so what are some others?

We had some others, didn't we?

Well, before we go there, let's talk a little bit about what, we're first

going to take a break, but we're gonna talk about some of the psychological

needs and desires of comfort foods and why we crave these things.

Because, let's figure out why we're packing it on our thighs for some reason.

Right.

So stay tuned.

We'll be right back.

Well, talking about comfort foods.

I mean, we, we all know what comfort food is, right, Sylvia?

That's a no-brainer.

Hit me on the head with a wooden spoon kind of thing.

there actually are some, really important interesting psychological

reasons as to why we crave comfort foods beyond the, some of the basics.

We think, , it's fall, it's cozy, we need this, but the temperature and heat.

Change actually Comfort foods help us conserve calories.

So we have to, well, we have to bulk up in order to use all those

extra calories that we need for shoveling snow and, everything else.

And there's something called a diet induced thermogenesis.

Now, do you know what that is?

No.

So that's the process of eating food that generates heat , which is a result

of dense foods like stews and Turkey.

And it creates , a, a feeling of comfort because, your body is now warm.

I mean, your body actually heats up with these foods, which is interesting.

I didn't think about that.

then now you have this extra energy in your body too.

To use it for raking leaves and shoveling snow.

Well, hopefully we haven't come to the snow sea, the snow season yet,

but certainly raking leaves and, and that we, we lived in the woods

in Connecticut one year, and my, when we first bought the house, my

father-in-law and, , my husband's, stepmother came up for Thanksgiving.

they looked at us and said, what do you do with all these leaves?

Well, we didn't have grass, we just had woods.

. And we just looked at each other and laughed.

Said, we just blow them into the woods.

Oh, okay.

So we didn't have to use too much comfort food for that.

But so the other thing on comfort food is the reduction in daylight.

That's important because our ability to produce serotonin actually goes down,

which regulates mood and sleep and appetite and everything else like that.

And we kind of need that to keep things going in the wintertime.

So think pasta and potatoes and corn.

Um.

Beef Stew is my favorite go-to.

And we did a little poll in our group and Jennifer Long Worthy and Lisa

Olson, my husband's cousin who we used to spend Thanksgiving with and um, Amy

Hillard all said they like beef stew.

You mentioned your granddaughter's burnt marshmallow.

Diane Bedard said mac and cheese, and Jen Hardy said something about.

A food that I'd never heard of called Kanji, which is her ultimate comfort food

and polish chicken and dumpling soup.

And I don't know about you, but if you've ever had Polish food, I think

every bite of Polish food, no matter what it is, is kind of like comfort

food, I think of like babushkas,

Yeah.

There you go.

Hey, you know what?

I keep going back though, to what you said.

You just that feeling of fall and you said something about you didn't know how.

It makes me think of that Supreme Court justice trying to define pornography.

And he said,

he said, I can't tell you what it is.

I just know it when I see it.

So, okay.

So there you go.

That, that's one of the things.

And then you've got, uh, my cousin Tracy Harkins offered up Thanksgiving

and , I can kind of conjure that up in my mind, how good Thanksgiving

smells and so that's good.

But, um, can I tell my story though, of the apple dumpling

recipe?

All right, so I found this, and it is clearly in my aunt's handwriting,

my Aunt Ruth and my Aunt Ruth.

Somehow this just shows you the journey of a recipe.

Okay?

One tiny little recipe for apple dumplings and.

The recipe in the corner, it says Mary Jane's recipe.

Well, Mary Jane was my grandmother on my father's side.

Aunt Ruth was my mother's sister.

So somehow it crossed the divide here.

Okay.

And it became Aunt Ruth's, uh, attributed to Mary Jane.

Well, Mary Jane wasn't a terribly nice person, and I'm not quite sure I can

even envision her doing this, except she was really obese and you know.

Died as a result of that.

So, uh, you know, she may, she ate a lot of apple dumplings, but there's this

huge long thing of a recipe that, we'll, you know, at some point we can post.

And, um, it, it includes a lot of very strange things like Mountain Dew.

Uh, I don't know you

even had Mountain

Dew back then, but anyway, and Mountain Dew.

But anyway, in the coroner it says.

There's a note to me again in my aunt's handwriting and this shows, okay,

so on top of all of that, we have a generational handing down of a recipe.

'cause she says, Sylvia, if you don't wanna make this, she knew me all too well.

If you don't wanna make this, give it to Ross, my oldest son, and he will make it.

And he may even add scotch.

Oh, that's funny.

My

In honor, yeah, in honor of our Scottish heritage because he and Aunt Ruth would

were sewing him a kilt, , one day.

And so he wore a kilt that he got married.

He's a very eccentric, interesting young man, but that is the journey

of a recipe and I just think it is so cool and he's gonna make this recipe,

but you know what he's gonna do?

He's gonna research Mountain Dew as he's a scientist.

That's one of his.

Degrees.

He's gonna research Mountain Dew and find out what it is that

Mountain Dew adds to the recipe.

'cause he will not use sugar

in his cooking.

and so anyway, there you go.

that is Mountain Dew.

I haven't heard of that.

Is, that is a definitely weird ingredient to add to something.

But,

I know,

All the rest is just gooey

Or like peanut butter or something.

Like, there's lots of strange things that people add to recipes that just make

it so delicious that you wouldn't know, like our, like our zappo zucchini pie.

But yeah.

So talk about favorite foods.

Can I tell you about a favorite food experience that,

that, that really evokes fall and comfort?

, This happened many years ago when my husband and I were just newly

married and we were renting a garage apartment in western Connecticut.

And every fall we would gather friends together no matter where we lived and how

big our house and how small our house was.

Our houses were always tiny anyway.

Could never cramp.

You get, no, everybody never, not everybody could fit inside.

We all had to sort of fit outside.

We went Apple picking up in the Aspen Tuck, apple orchards, and we were

going to invite some friends from the city and they said, well, we'd

love to come, but we can't because we've got customers in from Germany.

And I said, well just bring them along.

They're here for the weekend.

They have to experience a New England fall comfort food style.

So they came along, we went apple booking, and I had made a beef stew.

It was just kind of crisp outside.

So it was warm enough to sit outside, but you still kind of

needed a blanket on your lap.

And I make beef stew with Wine and potatoes and brown meat, you know the

cheap chunks and you just put it together.

And then I take a pumpkin and you roast the pumpkin, just enough to get it warm.

So it's not like solid, hard and cold, but just a little bit warm inside.

And then I use that as a turine.

So I put all the beef stew in the pumpkin and brought it

outside on our picnic table.

And here are the, the Germans, and then my friends and some other friends, and we're

all sitting there eating this beef stew.

Kind of cold waiting for the fall to like kick us out and go

home because it was too cold.

And lo and behold, in the backyard, two big deer come gently

walking across the backyard.

One had a big rack of antlers and the other was a dough probably.

And the Germans are like, oh my God, is National Geographic in your backyard?

Did you plan this?

It's like we laughed to start close.

We also were drinking a few beers along the way too, because it is fall.

Right?

And they were German, so we gave them American beer, not German beer.

Anyway, so then one of the guys said.

I love this beef stew.

Can my wife have your recipe?

And I laughed.

And they said, do they have Campbell's French onion soup in germany?

yummy.

I love that.

He didn't know what Campbell's French onion soup is.

I said, here's a can.

This is what it looks like.

You don't need to use Campbell's, but french onion soup and lots of red wine.

Don't put anything else in it.

so he took the recipe home.

I'm presuming that that was a traveling recipe that became

a ghost recipe in Germany.

So that is our comfort food story of

Yeah, I love that.

Hey, you know you can't go very far in this, so if you're talking to Beef Stew,

I'm gonna talk about its competitor

chili.

chili.

Everybody's got a chili recipe, something that they do.

In my case, mine is I make my burger, I make that, , and I put in

all kinds of goodies, even onion.

I sneak in onion because Bernie won't touch onions.

So he picks them

out

you put beans in it or no?

Beans.

I do, I do beans and , and then, and then the other thing I do mine is bland.

Bernie has a history of ulcers, so he, that's why he stays away

from all those kinds of things.

, But it's really good.

And I do it in a slow cooker and I freeze the, what we don't eat 'cause

we're empty nesters and it's so good.

How about you?

Oh, well , we put chili out at Christmas time for our Christmas parties, but I

learned a way to store the extra chili.

Now this is kind of interesting from one of our guests, , Mary, my friend, when

you've got too much chili and you've.

Just you after a party, you take a small sandwich bag, like a freezer

bag, and you put your chili in there per serving, or for two servings,

and then you squish it flat and then you can store flat in your freezer.

How's that?

That pretty cool,

Use Tupperware, but that's a good idea.

Right.

Yeah.

that's, that's just a, an option.

But, all sorts of comfort food.

There's are lots, there's a lots that we actually, there is a lot that we,

we can share about comfort food and fall foods and maybe just storing a

few extra nuts and yeah, nuts come

out around this time of year too, the nutcrackers.

Right.

yeah, but didn't your dad add beer?

My

See, you did wine.

He said, uh, but you said.

thought you did anyway, but he

my, my dad, yeah, my, my dad would've added scotch, not,

he wasn't a beer drinker.

If he is gonna put anything in something, it was gonna be scotch at the time.

So, anyway, that's, uh, make sure that you've got somebody's favorite drink on

the side, although, you know, most of 'em turning to a lot of non-alcoholic

beers now too, , which is also good.

But, um.

And peanut butter.

Hmm.

Peanut butter.

Peanut butter and jelly.

That's a good one.

And we can't forget lasagna.

, Joe had mentioned,, in our group, , Joe d Francesca, who actually

also makes his a pasta company.

He, his a pasta manufacturing company or the pasta machines he makes.

So Joe knows about lasagna.

And true Italian lasagna.

He grew up in our area when we were kids, but there's lots of comfort foods that

bring us all together this time of year.

And if you're not careful, you're gonna be wearing that winter

sweater into the summertime,

I promised my hairdresser, Jean, I would mention her full fa favorite,

and she got the recipe, I think out of a magazine or something,

so, we'll, we'll talk about that.

But, , she goes to Trader Joe's and she gets there.

Nochi pasta, and then she adds in sausage and Brussels sprouts and Parmesan

on top, and it sounds delicious.

She said that is her go-to.

So anyway, thank you Jean.

Thank you, Jean.

That's interesting.

I don't think about Brussels sprouts as comfort foods, but

I do love Brussels sprouts.

Although Bob calls Brussels sprouts, nature's turds

on that note, fall foods, it's not just about comfort for the sake of comfort.

There's a whole reason as to why we're packing it on for the winter time.

So we have more energy to get through those holiday times in the winter and are

ready to, well roll out the pie crust and.

Have more friends and family, keep us close and warm and

keep those stories going.

So on that note, please share this story and share this episode

with others and stay tuned because there's a lot more in store or a

lot more to lay aloud, right Sylvia?

That's correct, and it's, I gotta go in there and get my chili going.

Mm-hmm.

we'll hear you soon, and we'll see you soon because every meal has a

story and every story is a feast.

Lale it up.

Take care, and ciao.

Bye-bye