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2011-02-08-Comfort Foods Made Easy

Seminars@Hadley

Comfort Foods Made Easy

Presented by Patti JacobsonLinn SorgeBrenda Rice

Moderated byDawn Turco

February 8, 2011

Dawn TurcoGood morning, or afternoon, depending on your time zone. This is Dawn Turco, Senior Vice President of The Hadley School for the Blind, and it’s my pleasure to moderate today’s seminar entitled Comfort Foods Made Easy. We have a panel of three and all three are familiar with our seminars room and have presented in the past. I’m happy to bring back Brenda Rice, a student of The Hadley School, along with Patti Jacobson and Linn Sorge, both instructors.

Again, I am moderating and let me just start us off by asking if any of this rings true to you. There is a

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container of ice cream in the freezer at all times. You keep a supply of candy bars in your desk drawer. There is always a box of mac and cheese at the ready in the pantry. These are all examples of comfort foods.

Comfort food is defined as food that is simply prepared and gives a sense of well-being, typically food with a high sugar or carbohydrate content. This food is associated with childhood and with home cooking. I will add that if you search, however, do a little Google search, you’ll find some healthier options out there as it relates to comfort foods. One of my favorite sites, about.com, they define comfort food as food that soothes the psyche by reminding us of comforting childhood memories.

For most of us, these foods are far from gourmet and generally epitomize home cooking. They evoke feelings of nostalgia, safety and security, and for those inquiring minds who would like to know, comfort food appeared in the Webster Dictionary for the first time in 1977.

Having gotten us started with the concept for today’s seminar let me open it up and have a brief hello and a self-identification from our presenters. I will be handing the microphone off to Brenda first.



Brenda RiceThank you, Dawn. It’s interesting to hear what you have to say about comfort food. My name is Brenda Rice and I have been totally blind since 2004.

I have been cooking for, I hate to tell you, over half a century. I have edited two cookbooks in the past for recipes for other people and I am presently finishing up a cookbook of my own that I hope to get to the printers within the next month or so and it will have some comfort food in it as well.

I have cooked for many years sighted and I have now learned to cook being blind. It works well both ways if you just apply yourself a little bit. I will hand this off to Linn.

Linn SorgeWelcome, everyone. It’s so good to have you all here. It’s kind of nice because for some of us, lunch was maybe an hour, two hours ago, so we’re not quite as hungry as we might be if this had been right before lunch. When we would finish, we would really want to go after that comfort food.

When Dawn asked those questions, my hand would have gone up quite a bit of that time with yeses. I have been teaching at The Hadley School for ten



years. I don’t teach things about cooking; I teach more things about computers and access technology and Internet, so I’m very, very pleased to see some of my students in here because they’ve taken our classes and now are a little more comfortable joining in the seminar room.

I’ve been totally blind since birth from optic atrophy and I’m with Brenda – that’s been for more than half a century. I have loved to be in the kitchen and cook and bake since I was a wee girl, so mine is mainly a lot of personal experiences and some rehab teaching when in other settings.

Now we’re going to hear from the teacher at Hadley who really is in the know about all of this. Here’s Patti.

Patti JacobsonI don’t know if I’m in the know because I like to eat comfort food or because I teach the food series, but I would like to welcome everybody here this afternoon and thank you for coming. I’ve taught at Hadley for 16, going on 17 years. I do teach the food series and that talks a lot about buying food and nutrition and adaptive techniques, so if you’re interested in taking that, contact Student Services and let them know.



I’m totally blind and I can’t believe I’ve been cooking for more than a half century, too. We are a bunch of old people. I started out making pie crust cinnamon rolls where my mom would make pie crust and then I’d put cinnamon and sugar on it, roll it up and cut little rolls out of it and then we’d bake it. That was kind of a good comfort food when I was little.

I am going to send this back to Dawn. She’s going to talk a little bit about some research that we did about “what is comfort food?”

Dawn Turco It’s interesting. As we were getting started, one of you said, “I didn’t know coffee was comfort food.” Well, I think comfort food might be very much different for each of us and, in the end, very much the same.

We did do some research and each of us will be divulging what we’ve learned. I had to laugh about two weeks ago. I flipped on the Food Channel and the Barefoot Contessa was on, Ina Garten is her name, and she was saying that the definitive comfort food that she would be making that day was mac and cheese. I have to tell you, mac and cheese came out loud and clear.



I sent an e-mail around Hadley and asked that people, without a lot of great thought, just e-mail me back your comfort food, and I got so many e-mails so quickly. I then went onto my Facebook page and did the same thing and that was a good way to get replies from your friends. And, finally, my hairdresser, and you know what? My hairdresser does mac and cheese gourmet style, so he was quite proud of himself.

I’ll tell you a little bit more about some of what I learned, but let’s hand it off to Brenda again and see what her ideas of comfort food are.

Brenda RiceThanks, Dawn. It’s interesting to find out, Patti, that between the three of us, and Dawn, I notice, didn’t tell us how long she’d been cooking, but we’ve got at least 150 years of cooking experience between the three of us.

Also in my research, I did find mac and cheese at the top of the list, and I also found seasonal foods. This time of the year in particular were things like warm soups, chilies, hot chocolate, those types of things, as opposed to summertime where you’re talking about things like ice cream, milkshakes and creamy things – cheesecake, et cetera.



So, consequently, in the top five I also found a considerable variety depending on the part of the country people were from. I’m in the south. I live just a stone’s throw from the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, so what we consider comfort food here may be different from what Patti has where she is in Colorado or what you and Linn have, Dawn, in the Chicago area.

As you were saying, comfort food certainly elicits memories for me of childhood. When we get ready for recipes, and we’ll go down that trail in a little bit, but I know some of you have other things that you want to mention first.

Linn, how is it with your survey on comfort food?

Linn SorgeWell, interestingly, I did a little asking about what Dawn was saying. What is it? What makes you say comfort food? I found that sometimes it isn’t necessarily simplicity of preparation, which one would expect, but the feeling that comes with it. One of the recipes I put on the page was a healthy meatloaf. No, it’s not quick dump the mac and cheese out of the box, which I love – it was on my list – but it may be, “I remember my mom making that and I love how it



smells in the oven. I can put the potatoes in there at the same time.” It just brings back good feelings.

One of my former students who is a friend of mine, her name is Carla and she couldn’t be here today. I asked her her thoughts and this was very meaningful to me. She said she has a grandmother who is 105 years old and they call her Ma. Carla’s comfort food is Ma’s homemade vegetable soup.

Now, is that quick and easy? Probably, again, not like getting that ice cream out of the freezer or the Lorna Doones that the parrot ate out from under the sofa or whatever, but it brings back wonderful memories to a granddaughter who remembers as a youngster her grandmother preparing this for her and it making her feel warmed and loved and cared about. That recipe is up on our website as well.

I think a lot of it is ease of prep, ease of cleanup, but also, really thinking about why do I feel that way. Homemade bread is another example, and we’ll address some easy ways to resolve that, but that smell when you walk in that kitchen and that bread is baking, that is comfort.

Your turn, Patti.



Patti JacobsonThanks, Linn. I think it’s interesting. This is what I’ve observed right now. Dawn and I talked to our hairdressers. There used to be that old commercial that said only your hairdresser knows for sure. I asked my hairdresser what comfort food is. She said fresh hot bread, so that’s kind of a theme.

I asked somebody else – it’s kind of funny what would be comforting to different people – but she said a bologna sandwich with lots of mayonnaise. My mom said tapioca pudding and anything that’s got pudding in it or that’s one of those Jell-O pudding-type, chiffon-type desserts that’s got whipped cream on top. That’s comfort food, too.

But, I have to tell you an experience that I had with comfort food. It was a cold winter day, kind of like it is right now here in Colorado. I was reading a magazine and I decided to make some chicken soup from scratch where you have to boil the chicken and boil the bones, take the chicken off the bones and add your spices.

It took several hours for me to make this soup and I decided that I wanted it to be a little bit more substantial than it was. I thought I would put some macaroni in this soup, so I did. I just put the uncooked



macaroni in and I boiled it for a while and thought maybe this will be good. When I tasted it, the macaroni was still hard. I boiled it some more and it was still hard. Come to find out, I had put popcorn in my soup.

So, needless to say, one of our first tips is to find out a way that you can label your food so you know what you have.

Dawn, I’m going to send this back to you.

Dawn TurcoI love that story. Yes, comfort foods. When I polled Hadley, the expected mac and cheese came up and pastas of all varieties. Because we asked them in wintertime, it was no surprise that many varieties of soup came up, mashed potatoes and so forth.

Having that list, I went to a teacher we have in China. We have a school in China and there was a special program going on with about 50 Advanced English students that they were doing online. I said, “Would you mind asking your students what’s comfort food in China?” because, quite honestly, it’s not an American thing. Comfort foods come in all shapes and varieties and from many countries.



He sent me his list and as expected, there were the noodle dishes, and having been to China a number of times now, I know how much they love their fresh fruit, so a variety of fruits were on the list, but I was surprised to find ice cream and chocolate. As I said, some things are just universal.

Well, I have a quiz and I’m going to do some questions throughout. Let me go with the first quiz question. This is about a variety of international comfort foods. Here’s the question. According to a survey by British television channel Good Food, what is the most popular British comfort food? Here are the choices – there are always three – fish and chips, baked beans on toast, bangers and mash.

Well, I’ll tell you, if you didn’t guess bangers and mash, you’re wrong. If you’ve been to any good pub throughout England you’ll find bangers and mash on the menu. It’s basically sausage and mashed potatoes. Yum – I’ve had it. Anyway, that’s the idea of comfort food in England. We have some others coming along in a moment.

Meanwhile, I’m going to turn it back. We’re going to start talking about some recipes and some tips and I’ll be back with you in a little bit and talk to you about grilled cheese.



Okay, since I’m being pressured, I’m in the same age group as the rest of you and, if you’ve attended any of our food seminars in the past, you know I’m a low-vision cook and have lots of experience with comfort food, mostly on the eating side, but a lot of cooking along with that.

Let me hand it off to Brenda and she’s going to share a recipe. A reminder before I do that, we have started to compile our resource and recipe list. It will be posted with the archived version of this seminar so you can go and get it, and I can tell you, it’s already 20 pages long. We had a lot to say about comfort foods.

Brenda, handing it off to you.

Brenda RiceThanks, Dawn. It is hard to know where to start. I do have a macaroni casserole dish, but I’m going to save that for a little later because I know some of you other ladies have some macaroni things that you want to talk about as well.

Instead, I will start with something that I call Clumsy Chili. Especially with the cold weather, as Dawn said, around the United States right now, this came



about…my father used to cook this back in the ‘50s when he was home on the weekends. It’s a very simple chili dish. If any of you have heard my Crock-Pot seminar before, you know I’m the crackpot with a Crock-Pot, so usually if I can put in a slow cooker I’m in better shape.

I usually make this in the slow cooker and all it requires, this is on the resource list, is two to three pounds of ground beef, or in our case, we use a fair amount of ground venison. We live way out in the country and we have a lot of game out here on the farm so we do have venison, but ground beef works great.

Two to three onions, chopped, a couple of stalks of celery, red hot kidney beans – they’re called red hot chili beans – a can of those. If you can’t find those you can use regular kidney beans, either the light or dark. I don’t drain them. You can.

This is a very flexible recipe and, as I said, you can get the ingredients off the resource list. It calls for chili powder, cumin, I think maybe a tablespoon of sugar. I don’t use salt in my cooking. I rely on herbs instead, but if you do like salt, add however much you want to taste. A can of tomatoes and then the special ingredient that my dad put in that you don’t usually



find in chili is (break in audio) and you can start with a half cup and go up to as much as a cup if you want to for flavor. But, it does give it a really nice texture and taste. Look on the resource page for all the ingredients.

Anyway, put all of those together in your slow cooker, stir them up, put the lid on, turn it on low – I cook almost everything on low in the slow cooker – and leave it on for six to eight hours. Here in the south, my husband is a great lover of having that with corn bread. I prefer either saltines or oyster crackers with it.

If you want to have a chili party then you can set out all kinds of toppings – shredded cheeses, mozzarella, sharp cheddar, sour cream, guacamole, more chopped onions, anything that you think you would like to put on top as a dressing for your chili. We like it plain.

There are a couple of tips that I’ll give you before I turn this over to Linn. The first tip I’ve heard from Patti numerous times, if you’ve taken any of her courses or heard her on seminars before, and that is have your ingredients all out and in order so that it’s easy for you to know what you’ve already used and not used. Put it away as you’ve used it or throw away the cans when



they’re empty so that you don’t have extra cleanup later on.

That’s one tip that’s very important. The other thing is I like to use a dish in more than one way. If I’ve had chili as a soup in front of a nice cozy fireplace one day, then perhaps the next day for lunch, let’s say I’m going to have a good old fashioned cozy-type hot dog, just take your slotted spoon, drain off the liquid part of the chili and then just put that chili sauce, that mixture, the solid part, on top of your hot dog. It makes kind of an unusual chili topper for your hot dog. Sometimes I’ll add some shredded cheese on top of that.

My father also used to make a chili spaghetti where you cook a package of spaghetti to package directions, drain it, put it on your plate and ladle a heaping amount of chili instead of tomato sauce over the top of your spaghetti. Top it with shredded cheese, have a salad on the side and your crusty bread and you have another meal.

Or, the last one, you can put it in a taco salad. Chop up your greens, mix those up and ladle in your chili. Again, you can drain off most of the liquid, put taco chips on top, your guacamole, and you’ve got four dishes out of one batch.



Needless to say, I usually double my batch, freeze part of it and then it’s useful at another time. That’s one recipe that’s pretty versatile to use many, many ways. There are a lot of other ways you can use it, but that’s four. It’s a wonderful, wonderful dish to warm you on a cold, cold day or evening.

Linn, what’s your first recipe?

Dawn TurcoI’m just butting in before we hand it off. Brenda, there were some questions. There was kind of a hiccup when you were talking and we didn’t catch your dad’s secret ingredient. Could you repeat it before we hand off to Linn?

Brenda RiceOh, that really made it a secret ingredient that way, then, didn’t it? The secret ingredient is just plain old ketchup, anywhere from a half cup to a cup depending on your taste buds. Your ground beef is already browned, so mix everything up and just give it a taste and if you think it needs more than a half cup, just add another dollop, but it’s plain old ketchup.

Linn Sorge



That sounds very good to me. I made a note already here that I am going to use my next leftover chili in chili spaghetti. I am a pasta person. I love pasta and what a great idea. A bit of a variety with sauce and dump that cheese on there – it sounds wonderful. Well, since Brenda spoke about main courses, I, the first round, am going to focus a bit on a couple of desserts, one which could be a salad, and a salad.

Sometimes, if you’re visually impaired or totally blind, there are certain things you love, but you may opt not to eat them in a certain kind of social setting because they’re a bit more of a challenge. Let’s say somebody gives you a big slab of pie on a little, tiny plate. You think, oh, this is great, but you’ve got to deal with cutting it, getting the crust, if it happens to be not the best crust in the world and harder to cut, so I love pumpkin.

On your resource list there’s going to be something called pumpkin pudding. It’s truly just really yummy innards that you would put into a bowl and not have to deal with a crust. The amounts are on your recipe list.

You use a small can of pumpkin, a can of evaporated milk and a large package of vanilla instant pudding. I always use everything in that group at room



temperature. I might even just warm the milk a little bit before you mix the milk and the pudding together.

Sometimes, if you’re visually impaired, it’s a little challenging to make sure that all that powder in the pudding is dissolved. If you keep everything at room temperature or warm the milk just a little bit, it will dissolve it and mix it more easily. I use a little whisk or wire whip.

Then you take the small can of pumpkin pie filling and you put it in there and whip it all up together and put it in the fridge. If you are one who wants a little thicker pudding, then you buy the big can of pumpkin and put the whole thing in there and it makes it thicker.

Right before serving I get one of those, I don’t go with the from-scratch where you get the cream and you whip it. If it’s comfort food I buy the whipped cream in a can that you can get at the food store and I put a little dollop of it on top of each serving and it makes a lovely dessert. Even in the winter, even though it’s cold, it makes me think of Christmas and Thanksgiving with the pumpkin pie, but I don’t have to fight with the crust or the calories and butter and things that are in a crust. I was thinking of Patti’s mom when she said any kind of pudding, so I bet she might like this.



Another one I like is a pistachio fruit salad or dessert. It’s the kind of thing that you can use for a couple of days. You can use it as a nice fruit salad and then maybe as a dessert the next day if you happen to have different people at your house, or even if it’s just you and you’d like it twice. If you can use it for two different courses, that’s great justification.

I like that kind of salad because it clings together and it’s handier to eat. I am not one to put it on a great big lettuce leaf because then you’re dealing with having to worry about getting the lettuce leaf caught on your fork. If I serve it, I just put it in a little sauce bowl or a little cup or just in a nice scoop, but not over lettuce leaves.

The other recipe that is a salad, it’s called peachy fruit salad, and that is on your list, too. Again, you can vary this. I use pineapple, sweet cherries, mandarin oranges, a nice big apple, and seedless grapes. I cut the grapes in half so that I’m not chasing whole grapes rolling around a plate. If you just cut them in half they don’t roll.

Walnuts or pecans, shredded coconut if you like, three cups of miniature marshmallows, a large banana, and a can of peach pie filling. Why that?



Firstly, you’re not using a cream base. It’s all fruit and you’re not using a Cool Whip or anything to put it together. The marshmallows are sweet enough.

I always say don’t do anything with the banana until right before you serve it, then slice it up and scatter it on the top of the salad. When you present it at the table that way, it doesn’t tend to get brown. Again, this is a salad where the peach pie filling gives it the ability to cling together.

Fresh fruit is wonderful, too, where you just put all those fruits in a bowl and stir them up, but if you want it to adhere and be easier to eat if you’re in a social setting where that is a comfort level concern, then mix it with peach pie filling. You get a few peaches and it holds together well.

Now it’s Patti’s turn to tell you some great ideas.

Patti JacobsonOh, man, I am so hungry. I don’t know about the rest of you. Linn, you had great ideas about fixing foods that make it a little bit easier to eat.

The recipe that I’m going to tell you about is cake. It’s called a lazy day oatmeal cake and it’s a heavy cake. It’s not a real light crumbly cake, so it’s actually a little



bit easier to eat, too. What I’m going to do is tell you the ingredients. I’m not going to give amounts. This is kind of an involved recipe and it will be on the list that will be archived.

You have boiling water, old fashioned oats, brown sugar, granulated sugar, vanilla, margarine, eggs, flour, salt, soda and cinnamon. All of that is what goes in the cake. The frosting is what makes it so good. It’s margarine, brown sugar, milk, nuts, coconut and vanilla. Again, the directions for making this will be on the recipe.

You heat the frosting in a saucepan and you pour it over the hot cake and it kind of seeps down into the cake and makes it really buttery and gooey. That’s what I like in terms of comfort food.

In terms of some tips, this may seem obvious, but if you haven’t already marked your oven in some way that you can tell how to set it, that would be something that you would need to do, either with raised markers or Braille or some other method. Also, check the oven rack before you put the cake in. Do it while the oven is cold. Make sure it’s in the right place.



I measure the cold water. I put the amount that I want; I believe it’s a cup and a half. Put it in a container a little bit larger than that and heat it up in the microwave, then when you boil the water, you have the right amount and you don’t need to worry about measuring it.

I usually assemble the dry ingredients in one bowl, the liquid or wet ingredients in another bowl, and then I beat the eggs, first of all, until they’re light and fluffy. Don’t hesitate, with clean hands, to feel what you’re doing. Stick your fingers in there and feel if it’s light and fluffy.

When you’re making this recipe, you have to put vanilla in there. Vanilla’s sometimes kind of tricky to measure. You can keep that, maybe, in the refrigerator so you could feel it a little bit more when you’re pouring it into a teaspoon, or you could even use an eye dropper to measure vanilla.

After you combine all of the ingredients according to the recipe, you pour into a 9” by 13” greased, floured baking dish. I usually grease with Pam, it’s just a little bit easier, and then I take the flour sifter and sift a little flour in the pan and smooth it around with my fingers. Then you can turn the pan upside down over the sink



and tap on the bottom of it a little bit and that way you get some of the excess flour out of the pan.

When I pour from my mixing bowl into the 9” by 13” pan I put the bowl on the short end of the pan and pour so it’s going lengthwise, the long way. I don’t know if that makes sense, but the pan is more apt to catch all of what you’re pouring instead of you pouring it out on the counter or on the stove.

After you pour the frosting on the cake you’ll have to move the rack in the oven. Raise it because you then turn the oven to broil and you set the cake under the broiler for, maybe, 30 seconds to a minute until you can hear it sizzle just a little bit. That toasts the coconut and it’s so good.

I’m going to send this back to Dawn and she’s going to talk about techniques for making grilled cheese sandwiches.

Linn SorgeI’m going to pop in for just a second, Dawn, if that’s okay, about vanilla. I’m with Patti – it’s a nuisance to measure. I bought a very inexpensive set of measuring spoons, cheap would be the word, so that they bend easily. Right above the bowl of each spoon I bend them at a 90° angle so the bowl of the spoon



would be sitting on the countertop and the handle would be sticking straight up.

I put my vanilla in a wider mouth jar and I put it right next to the bowl. I dip the spoon down in the vanilla, lift it up and dump it into the bowl. It saves a lot of spilling and I do that for a lot of liquid measure.

I’m sorry to have bumped in here but I thought that might be handy. It’s up to you, Dawn.

Dawn TurcoThanks; that was a great tip, so no problem.

Grilled cheese. The back story on this is a couple months ago, Goldie Tarr, who I see in the room, she’s the low-vision chef, she and I did a day-long in-service with a school for the blind residential hall staff in New York.

When we asked them what they wanted to know about what skills they wanted for teaching their kids in their dormitories, one of the big things that came up was, “How do you make a grilled cheese sandwich?” Since I know that we often have vision professionals and moms with young children with visual impairments in our seminars, I thought I’d share some of the techniques that we uncovered.



Thanks to a very good size staff and faculty at Hadley to contribute, I sent a note out and I said to our staff with visual impairments, “How do you do grilled cheese?” Well, I got the group and one called themselves cheaters. There’s the group that toasts first, puts the cheese in the middle, puts the combination on a microwave-safe plate, puts it in the microwave for about 20 to 30 seconds, and that’s their grilled cheese sandwich.

As much as they owned up being kind of a back door way of making a grilled cheese sandwich, they’d like to add that you didn’t have to put any butter on it, so it was a little bit healthier.

We also had the group who are strong advocates of the good old George Foreman. Again, it eliminates the need for butter and, as one of our teachers said who has a family, she loves doing it for her children. She has a number of children and she can do multiple grilled cheeses at once.

Here’s another one in an e-mail I got, “For me, when the sandwich is on the grill, turning it over is the challenge. The double spatula is a helpful tool. It works like tongs. You slip the bottom part under the sandwich and squeeze the handle to bring the top



part down on top of the sandwich. Then you just turn the sandwich over and set it down again. Before releasing the handle, you can move the sandwich about in the pan wherever you would like it.”

She adds that by the time you have turned it over and set it down, the top is cool enough to touch lightly. That was another thing that came through in talking about grilled cheese techniques. In part it’s a light touch; in part it’s the smell. You can distinguish the smell of the grilled cheese toasting. The third thing is to keep a mind on the time. It’s a time issue.

So, those were some of the tips for grilled cheese sandwiches that our faculty shared. When we looked at lists of comfort foods, grilled cheese always ranked right up there.

Before we go to Q & A, and I’m about to open the microphone to everyone, let me give you one more quiz question. We often have Canadians in our group, so if I mispronounce this, apologies and correct me. Feel free to do so.

In Quebec, poutine, P-O-U-T-I-N-E, is the ultimate comfort food. The base of the dish is french fries. What ingredients transform french fries into poutine?



Mayonnaise and ketchup, brown gravy and cheese curds, or maple syrup?

Do we have any Canadians who might want to raise their hand, or if you think you know the answer to that one? Alright, no takers. I will tell you, that was a toughie. It’s the brown gravy and cheese curds that turns those french fries into the Quebec favorite comfort food.

Alright, let’s open it up for a few questions before we trudge on this morning, or this afternoon or this evening. One of the questions that came through on text asked, “How do you safely cut the fruits and the grapes and so forth?” I think, Linn, maybe that was related to some of your recipes, so how do you do that with the vision impairment is the question.

Linn SorgeSometimes people talk about knives and cutlery and they think if it’s not as sharp, it’s better. Wrong. You need to use good cutting techniques, a good board and a good, nice sharp knife. Always make sure that you don’t have your fingers where the knife is going to be.

An apple would be a good example. First I core it using an apple corer, then I start to dice it up. You can



run the knife along the back of your finger where your fingernail is, but always make sure that your hands are beyond where that knife is going to be.

A lot of what happens with the fruit salad I was talking about is it’s a lazy fruit salad. You get pineapple tidbits, mandarin oranges, sweet cherries, so that they only things you need to really cut would be the apple and the grapes. You do a lot of dumping of good stuff.

Another thing, when you’re cutting grapes, if you take the tip of the knife and poke it into the skin of the grape just a little bit, you’ll hear it kind of pop as it goes through the skin. That way you’re not sawing at the grape. You’ve already punctured the skin and it’ll usually just slice in half very easily.

Dawn TurcoGreat, any other questions as this point? Let me open up the microphone. I see a text message about where the recipes will be. I’ll answer that directly. Let me just offer the microphone to anyone who might like to pick it up.

CallerSorry, my mic didn’t work earlier. It’s [poo-tin], the pronunciation.



Dawn TurcoThank you so much. I have a couple other ones that I may stumble with, but it’s fascinating to see the international comfort foods.

The answer to the text message as to where the recipes we’re referring to will be, we archive the recording. This session is being recorded. It appears on the past seminars page at the Hadley website and along with the versions of the recording we also put a downloadable resource list. The recipes are on that resource list, so probably by Friday we will have this posted.

In the meantime, I will invite anyone who’s participating today to send in any tips or recipes they’d like to have added to our recipe list. We always love gathering up good recipes. One more question. I think Cynthia has her hand up.

CinnaHello. Actually, I prefer people to call me Cinna, but that’s not the issue here. I bought a glove from, I believe, amazon.com, and it’s a glove that prevents your fingers from being cut. It’s similar to an Ove Glove where it stretches over your fingers and your hand.



It’s actually a glove. You can cut without worry of slicing off part of your fingertips. I bought it specifically to use with a food slicer that I bought that had very sharp edges and it’s handy and it will prevent your fingers from being cut by a knife. I’m sorry I don’t know the exact name of it but it’s a glove that prevents you from getting cut.

CallerI wanted to add, she spoke of something called an Ove Glove and I know Patti and I use them. If you don’t know what that is yet, it’s a glove that fits over your hand but it’s much more usable than an oven mitt because each finger can be bent and used and it keeps you from getting burned in the oven. You can move each finger separately and it’s not so thick that you feel like you’re outside shoveling snow in big mittens. If you don’t have them, Ove Gloves are great.

Dawn TurcoAlright, let’s move on since time is getting away from us. Before we go on to a few more favorites and tips, let me do this quiz question.

Chicken stock, eggs and lemon make a tangy, yet rich soup in what country? That was chicken stock, eggs and lemon. The choices are China, Mexico or Greece. And, the answer is Greece.



Having an instructor at Hadley who has her roots in Greece, I asked her, “How do you pronounce the name of this soup?” I am going to, hopefully, play for you how you pronounce this soup because Kathy sent me back an e-mail with a voice message in it.

KathyHi Dawn. The word is avgolemono. Avgo means egg. Lemoni, lemono is lemon. So, egg lemon soup is avgolemono.

Dawn TurcoIt’s great to have so many resources nearby. Thank you, and Kathy just participated, I think, in her first seminar with us even though she wasn’t really here.

I have a couple of things I want to share but we’re going to go back through the group. Brenda is coming up again first, so Brenda, I am handing the microphone off to you and we’ll share a few more recipes and tips and get to some more Q & A.

Brenda RiceThanks, Dawn. Wow, as you say, time is flying by quickly. I have two recipes in particular I wanted to mention, but since I had already mentioned a macaroni casserole dish, kind of a takeoff of macaroni



and cheese, but, again, it’s something my mother used to make.

The recipe has been around since at least the early ‘50s in our family and it also is on the resource list. It contains either large elbow macaroni or you can use small, sharp cheddar cheese, two cans of cream of mushroom soup in addition to onions, green peppers, pimentos and a cup of mayonnaise. You just mix that all together and put it in the oven.

Again, this is something that freezes well. Usually, when I cook, I make one for now and one for later so that my freezer is always stocked with things. If I don’t feel like cooking or it’s one of those nights where we say, “What are we going to eat?” all we have to do is open our little homemade TV dinner-type freezer compartment and pull out things that have already been prepared from scratch by us earlier, pop them in the oven and then dinner is ready an hour later.

This casserole is one that is very good for holidays. That’s what we always used it for – birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, that type of thing, but now I use it just because my family enjoys it over the years. Now it’s just me and my husband and we put it in smaller containers and it freezes well, reheats



well and does well. The actual ingredients are on the resource list.

I’ll mention the other thing is a custard and if we get time, I’ll go through that. If we don’t, you can look that one up on the resource list as well.

I’ll let Linn have it at this point for her additions.

Linn SorgeI want to talk to you about something. Part of comfort for me if I’m having people over is easing my stress level, so I put a recipe up on there – eggs plus whatever, a kind of casserole.

You make it the night before and you can use sausage in it or shrimp or crab or bacon, and then it has cheese and eggs and bread. You get it all mixed up together, put it in your fridge, and in the morning you get up early and pop it in the oven. As people get up or come into the house it’s going to smell wonderful.

A couple of healthier tips for that are use wheat bread instead of just plain old soft white bread when you make it. Let’s say a recipe calls for eight eggs. What I will do is use ten eggs, but then remove six of the yolks so that it’s a lot more white. I’ve never had a



single person notice the difference. So, you can just take a recipe and make it a little more healthy and still have the comfort.

Often what my family likes with it are the rolls you get in the tube from the store. You just knock the tube on the counter and you put the rolls in little muffin cups or on a sheet and there you go. You put them in the oven or some precooked sausages, whatever you want.

The other thing is something called ting-a-lings – one we all probably know. It has chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, chow mein noodles, shredded coconut if you want, and salted peanuts. You melt the chips and things and stir it all together.

The reason I’m talking about this is it’s a very yummy dessert or snack candy, but it can be a pain to get the stuff in little clumps and drop it by teaspoons. So, another way to do it is grease the pan. I’m with Patti, use a spray or Pam spray, and instead of trying to drop it by teaspoons, put it in the pan, pat it down and chill it and then cut it in little squares. That way you don’t have to mess with trying to get those little things all over the wax paper. You can just cut it in small squares once it cools down a little and you’re all set.



The recipe on our resource list will tell you how to toast the coconut that goes with it so it can be a little more crunchy.

Now I’m going to turn this to Patti and if she has one that’s as good as that cake, I’m waiting for it.

Patti JacobsonBefore I talk about my really quick cinnamon bread pudding recipe, I wanted to just point out a couple resources on the resource list. Schwan’s home delivery is a service that you can get lots of different foods but it’s frozen. They come right to your door and they have their catalogs in Braille. I know they used to have them on tape. They even have the product preparation instructions.

They have things like soup, pies, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, shepherd’s pie, caramel pecan rolls, those good herb biscuits like you get at Red Lobster, and Texas toast that’s garlic bread. There are couple kinds of ice cream they have like butter pecan, chocolate chip cookie dough, and chocolate peanut butter. I would urge you to check into that.

For the cinnamon raisin bread pudding, it’s really easy. Again, I’m just going to give you the ingredients and you can see it on the recipe. It’s cinnamon raisin



bread, milk, eggs, brown sugar or white sugar, and vanilla. You just beat the eggs first and add the milk to that and combine all the ingredients.

The directions say to bake it in an 8” by 8” pan. I would use a deeper 8” by 8” pan if you have one, maybe a CorningWare casserole dish, because bread pudding does kind of rise when it bakes.

That’s the only tip I would have. Otherwise it’s a very friendly, really good recipe and you can serve it with whipped cream.

Okay, Dawn, back to you.

Dawn TurcoThanks, Patti. I’ll go through two of my favorites that I’ve added to the list and we’ll not talk a great deal about either of them because of time.

I added a cinnamon bread pudding recipe to the list. Actually, I’ll be bringing it in to Hadley on Monday. The beauty of this one is it cooks in the Crock-Pot. It’s the basic ingredients you might imagine already. You get that into the Crock-Pot, turn it on low, and three hours later you’ll have this delicious warm cinnamon raisin bread pudding. When you’re at home you certainly can do it before company arrives and have it



piping hot when it’s time for dessert, so check that one out.

Secondly, being a native of St. Louis, I grew up on Famous-Barr onion soup. I have tried onion soup in all of my travels and have never found one that I adore as much as the old Famous-Barr onion soup. Famous-Barr went away and Macy’s took over, but fortunately for those of us who grew up on this recipe, the recipe is available.

I make it with a girlfriend because it makes a lot. You’re doing a lot of onion peeling and getting that outer peel off and I want to tell you, I have a new favorite gadget that I’m using and it’s a Scrap Trap. It’s a little plastic bin that hooks over your drawer. You close that drawer again and it’s right there at the edge of your counter and you just sweep all that stuff that’s going to ultimately make it over to the garbage can into this Scrap Trap. I got that from lowvisionchef.com.

I see Goldie’s been on answering some of the questions about cutting. Being a professional chef, she has great techniques and shares some of those on her website. She talked about one of her favorites, there’s a bridge of some sort, a knife guard, I should say, so I would encourage you to check out some of



the simple aids that are available to us. Her website will be on our resource list as well.

Again, we’re running short on time. Let me do one more quick quiz question and then open it up to questions. This one is dosas, D-O-S-A-S, and it is pronounced doe-suz. A sweet food in south India has made its way to the streets of Manhattan. What food would you compare a dosa to? Is it a dumpling, a hot dog, or a pancake?

We have an instructor who is originally from India so I was able to, again, get a pronunciation there. Dosas are like pancakes but thinner and made from rice and lentils. You try them wrapped around potatoes or chick peas for a fast lunch. That would be your comfort food in India.

Alright, we have a few minutes. Let me see if there are any other questions. I’m releasing the mic.

GlenHi, this is Glen. I don’t have a question but I wanted to add to the Schwan’s thing. Besides being in Braille, everything is also on the Internet – the complete product list, description of all the products and product instructions.



I have to say it’s good to hear Linn because we’re old school mates.

Linn SorgeHi, Glen, I thought that was you. I’m with you and Patti. I love Schwan’s. In these cold, icy, snowy days he came to my house last Friday and they’re very helpful. They will tell you the specials, and not only is there a food prep guide, but they tell you how many carbs, how much sodium, so if you are a diabetic or have other food concerns, you can even get that online and in Braille.

CallerThis isn’t a question, but speaking of Schwan’s, when we started this seminar, I was still a bit hungry, even though I had lunch downstairs at the Eagle’s Manor. I went and got some of those Schwan’s apple slices that have the coating or breading, or whatever you call it, on them and heated them up in the microwave and was eating them while we were going through this.

Dawn TurcoWell, I have to say that on this morning’s weather forecast, they were talking about the Arctic chill that was going to be affecting about 40 states in the United States today, so I know most of us had our



minds on comfort food. Many of us had our minds on the winter variety, but there are certainly varieties for all seasons.

We’re getting close to the end and, always being the educator, I want to throw another fact out to us. This is according to John Mariani, who is the author of the Dictionary of American Food and Drink. Macaroni and cheese was first made in the nineteenth century, but it took on an even greater popularity when Kraft Foods introduced the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese dinner, and that was done in 1937. According to a company spokesman, Kraft now sells more than 1,000,000 boxes of the dinners every day. Can you believe that? 1,000,000 boxes.

I’m going to open up the participants one more time and then we’ll get ready to close.

CallerAnother thing for chili, my kids always liked when I baked french fries and put the french fries on the plate and poured chili and cheese. At Christmas time when I do a lot of baking, I have a tendency to make several cookie recipes. What I do is I set them up in either bowls or a plastic bag, and then when I’m ready, all my dry ingredients are ready for me the next day.



Dawn SorgeThank you much for that. Again, we are winding down. I wanted to get in one last tip. It’s from Goldie in the text messaging. If you’re not comfortable with a short knife, use a lettuce knife or a small Bakeware Buddy knife made of nylon. This way you have control of the knife. It’s serrated and only cuts when you are putting power on it.

I appreciate that, Goldie, because we often have, again, parents who are wondering how to introduce, especially to youngsters in the kitchen.

Alright, ladies, I’m going to throw the microphone back for a final comment as we get ready to close out our seminar today. Handing it off to Brenda.

Brenda RiceOkay. I think my last comment concerning comfort food is while they may not always be the most healthful, in limited amounts, enjoy. That’s the idea of them being comforting and you can always limit your portions.

There are comfort foods, as Dawn had said, for summer, spring, winter and fall and they can be different with each season. So, just interweave them and have a balance of what you eat. Sometimes it’s



comfort food, sometimes it’s health food and sometimes they can be the same thing.

The general idea is enjoy your cooking, be safe with it, and certainly, bon appétit.

Linn SorgeThis is Linn and I’m going to give a final tip, just a little, quick one because of the Arctic chill we’re all involved in here, about cocoa. If you’re going to make cocoa, whatever your favorite brand is, it’s often nice to put the powder in the mug and then fill the mug about half full of very, very hot water. Then do your vigorous stirring where you don’t have to worry so much about the cocoa or the water spilling over the top. Then add the rest of the water and stir very gently. That way you don’t risk quite as much of a mess.

As Brenda said, you can enjoy things, just use a smaller mug if you think, “Oh, I’ve had a lot of good stuff today. I really shouldn’t have cocoa.” Just find a smaller mug on your shelf.

I’m one to always say use a smaller tool if you can, if you’re visually impaired or totally blind. If you put less space between your hand and that tool and the tip of



the tool and what it’s doing, you have more control over it.

It’s been great. I love doing these seminars with these three. It’s a real pleasure for me and it’s always wonderful to see all of you in here joining us, so take note of all the comfort foods we’ve suggested, add some of your own and enjoy them. That’s the most vital part – enjoy preparing them and eating them and sharing them with others around you.



Patti JacobsonThis is Patti and I was going to make a comment about sharing your comfort food. I don’t have a family to share my comfort food with and I don’t want to eat that whole oatmeal cake all by myself. Actually, I would right now kind of like to, but anyway, use it as a way to reciprocate for help that people give you, like if they drive you someplace or do some reading for you or help you around your house because of, maybe, being visually impaired. You can make something good for them and share it.

Thank you all for coming today.

Dawn TurcoThank you, Patti. One last thing I’ll add that’s going to be on our resource list, I mentioned about.com earlier on and they did a survey of their readers, and they have the 25 American comfort foods and recipes that were top on the list, if you follow the link. That’ll be on our resource list. They name the 25 top foods and there are recipes associated with each one, so have some fun with that.

Well, we’re at the end of our time today. I do want to thank Brenda and Linn and Patti. It’s been fun. We had as much fun even planning for this one as



delivering it. I do hope you as participants have enjoyed the seminar today. If, indeed, you’d like to hear it again, it will be archived on our site at hadley.edu. Follow the link to past seminars and you’ll have a choice of streaming it on your computer and listening to it like we did today, or you can download it and take it with you and listen to it in a more portable fashion.

Along with those two links will be the resource list we talked about. Up top will be some Web resources and then we have the recipes that Brenda and Linn and Patti and I talked about today. We also have a recipe submitted by one of Hadley’s instructors and we have that wonderful vegetable soup that Linn referred to earlier on. That is on the list as well, so we invite you to download it and have fun cooking some comfort foods and getting us through these harsh winter days.

Your recipes or comments or feedback or suggestions for topics go to our feedback line. Our e-mail address is just simply [email protected]. Thank you for that question. I would have been angry with myself if we had gotten off and not covered that – [email protected].

The next seminar later this month, folks, we go pretty far away from cooking on the next one. It’s all about


mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


Yahoo and its accessibility features, so watch for that announcement. Good night, everybody. [End of Audio – 1:05:40]


2011-02-08-comfort foods made easy fo… · web view08/02/2011 · seminars@hadley. comfort...

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