The phrase "comfort food" gets bandied about a lot on TV cooking shows these days, graces the cover of many a bestselling cookbook, and even appears on restaurant menus... But what does it mean?
Webster's dictionary first included the term in 1977. Here's their definition:
food prepared in a traditional style having a usually nostalgic or sentimental appeal
I like this definition from Dictionary.com even better:
simple, home-style food that brings comforting thoughts of home or childhood.
I was born in 1962, and did the bulk of my "growing up" in the 1970s, in a Midwest, USA small town. It was a simpler time, and in many ways, a better time. There were only three channels on anybody's TV – NBC, CBS and ABC, and consequently, everybody watched the same shows. We all listened to the same music, went to the same movies (VCRs had not been invented yet, let alone DVDs and Blue Ray players), and to a remarkable degree, we all ate the same home cooked meals. And in that inexplicable way the smell of roses can carry you back to the night you first fell in love, or a picture from a childhood Christmas can reduce one to unexpected tears, the home cooked meals we remember from childhood have an almost magical power to transport us backward in time, to the happier, less complicated days of our youth.
That's comfort food. If you're an American Baby Boomer, chances are you and I are talking about the same dishes when we apply that term – pot roast, beef stew, chicken and dumplings, tuna casserole...
But wait! you might reasonably object at this point, this is a VEGAN cookbook! Those foods are all meat! Don't vegans and vegetarians have to swear off American cuisine forever? Is it even possible to live as a vegan in the USA, and still eat any of the foods we grew up with?
Yes it is! You did not exchange your credentials as an American for your "vegan ID." You can be both! This cookbook series will show you the way. "The way home" might be overstated... But the way, nonetheless. The foods you remember from childhood, especially if you grew up in the 1970s, are all here, recreated in a way that preserves their "comfort," but eliminates all animal products. This is guilt-free nostalgia at its best!
Volume One of the I Can't Believe It's Vegan series explored meals prepared in that 1970s kitchen standard, the Crock Pot. Volume Two focused on dinner main courses. This volume tackles everybody's favorite part of the evening meal – dessert! Future volumes will explore lunch favorites, holiday menus, outdoor cooking and more.