Frugal Comfort and Holiday Foods

You Tell Me: Favorite Comfort and Holiday Foods

Posted by Lynnae on July 18, 2008

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Mashed Potatoes.jpg

I love mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving!

I love food! Food is an important part of life. Whether it’s eating a snack with the kids after school, praying around the breakfast table, or sharing the highlights of the day at dinnertime, food provides an opportunity to connect with your loved ones.

When I was just out of college, I briefly volunteered for the Children’s Advocacy Center, a safe and friendly place where abused children are brought when they are questioned by authorities. They also testify before the grand jury there. The one thing I remember from training is that they always provide the grand jury with food, because it makes the atmosphere seem relaxed, and thus the children relax.

Yes, food is important.

This week’s question comes from Cindy. She has a two part question.

What are your favorite frugal comfort foods? Do they stay the same in summer and winter?

Second question. What holiday foods are important to your family — are they frugal too, or do you scrimp to include them?

Since it’s a two part question, I’ll give a two part answer.

Favorite Frugal Comfort Foods

I’ll admit I’m a total sugar and carb addict. If it’s starchy and sugary, I love it. To make my comfort foods frugal, I make them from scratch. Some of my favorites are:

Homemade Bread
Banana Bread
Homemade Brownies
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate Pudding Cake

I tend to eat more comfort foods in the winter than in the summer. In the summer I just flat out don’t feel like eating a lot of the time. And if I’m in need of comfort food, I splurge on ice cream (usually on sale). Any kind of chocolate is my favorite.

When I’m sick, my favorite food is homemade chicken soup, of course. And I have to have saltine crackers on the side.

Favorite Holiday Foods

I love tradition. And since I love tradition, my favorite holiday foods are pretty typical. Turkey on Thanksgiving, Ham at Christmas. And you can never have too many potatoes. Mashed at Thanksgiving and scalloped at Christmas.

The splurges we make are on cranberry sauce and shrimp cocktail. I much prefer homemade cranberry sauce to the canned stuff, so we splurge on fresh cranberries. And shrimp cocktail is a tradition on my mom’s side of the family, so that’s a spurge too, though that’s usually my mom’s contribution to the meal.

Since my favorite holiday foods are very traditional, I buy everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, on sale. Winco is pretty good about price matching other stores during the holidays, so I just grab all the store flyers and hit Winco for my holiday shopping. Every once in a while, if we have extra money, we’ll splurge on a smoked turkey for Thanksgiving.

As traditional as I am, I don’t really have any Easter dinner traditions. Easter tends to be a meal where I experiment with different things. I’ve done lamb, brunch, prime rib, and a whole host of other meals, and so far nothing has stuck. Maybe someday I’ll have an Easter dinner tradition, too.

So let’s hear it. What are your favorite comfort foods? Holiday foods? Do you splurge, or do you find ways to save?

Photo by VirtualErn.

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Comments

23 Responses to “You Tell Me: Favorite Comfort and Holiday Foods”

Frugal Dad on July 18th, 2008 6:24 am

Not sure it qualifies as a “comfort food,” but I enjoy hot wings and an ice cold Coca Cola during football season. In fact, there was a time where it was a Monday night ritual! These days I’ve tried making my own for Monday Night Football, and skipping the Coke (or having a Diet Coke). It got expensive, and eating hot wings at 10:00pm made for a miserable Tuesday morning, if you know what I mean!
Southern on July 18th, 2008 6:26 am

I have to have dressing at Thanksgiving. And, I have found that I really am snobby about it. It has to be made the southern way and taste like my mamma’s. I also like banana pudding at Thanksgiving. My MIL makes it with jello banana pudding- I can’t tell her that it isn’t the same at all. It has to be cooked in the double boiler on the stove. We have homemade icecream on the 4th of July. Vanilla with a lot of vanilla. It all comes down to the memory that is erected with the food. It can’t be improved upon.
Christian Personal Finance on July 18th, 2008 7:12 am

@Frugal Dad
That most definitely is “comfort food”! It makes you comfortable doesn’t it?

But for me, I would have to say the Darkest chocolate I can find is my favorite comfort food. I also love some good looseleaf tea too!
Marci on July 18th, 2008 8:50 am

My comfort food is Libby’s Corned Beef Hash with two eggs over easy on top. Goes back to Sunday mornings when Mom would fix it for Dad and us for special breakfasts. Yum! No other Corned Beef Hash tastes quite the same, and it’s hard to find out here.

Christmas morning: Shrimp Quiche, or Smoked Salmon and Tillamook Cheddar Quiche.

Thanksgiving and Christmas dressings have to be Mom’s Oyster Dressing, also Candied Sweet Potatoes with cinnamon and marshmellows melted on top.

And Christmas: Ma-Ma’s Date Nut Chews with confectioner’s sugar sprinkled on top. Last Christmas I reintroduced those to my kids, they still love them (it’d been a while) so I know they’ll all be getting tins of them for Christmas gifts this year.

Easter is my sister’s Easter Bunny Cake. Matters not what it is made of, but how it looks like a bunny head. It has to be made in two round pans, and the 2nd pan cut to make two bunny ears and a bow tie - then frosted with white fluffy frosting and decorated with Jelly bean eyes, nose, and spots on the bow tie About a 40 year tradition that Easter Bunny Cake !

And my kids love Scrapple… but since their Dad died, and we haven’t butchered pigs, I haven’t made it - so I need to figure that out for the kids/grandkids again sometime.

Boy - you’ve made us all hungry now with this posting, haven’t you!
JustaDog on July 18th, 2008 9:12 am

My comfort food is Libby’s Corned Beef Hash…

Comfort from a ground-up dead animal? Gross.

I don’t find comfort in food, but I do find comfort in running!
Looby on July 18th, 2008 9:31 am

Comfort foods- roast potatoes, or champ (mashed potatoes with butter, cream and spring onions) and back bacon (not that awful streaky stuff).
Holiday food- chipolatas, bacon and cheese rolls.
Lee on July 18th, 2008 9:34 am

All these foods sound wonderful! Comfort food for me is fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy with biscuits. Also, I love Red beans and sausage with rice and cornbread. Yum!

For the holidays, we like turkey and cornbread dressing with lots of turkey gravy. Sometimes, we’ll get a fried turkey from Popeye’s for a different treat.
For dessert, we like banana pudding, too, but not cooked on the stove. I just mix up vanilla and banana cream instant pudding and sour cream and whipped cream, and then layer it with cut up bananas and vanilla wafer cookies. That’s the best way to me and my extended family. It goes quick! For the other holidays, it’s mix and match and some of the same.
Monroe on a budget on July 18th, 2008 9:47 am

For Easter and Christmas, I serve brunch.

We are always at relatives’ feasts later in the day. So my holiday cooking is breakfast.

I’ll do more “upscale” things like Fruit-stuffed French toast when our usual breakfast would be eggs with tortillas, oatmeal or cereal. And I set the table with our best china and table linens.
Marci on July 18th, 2008 10:55 am

For Justadog…. YES! With NO apologies for
being an Omnivore, nor one of that vanishing breed, a farmer on a family farm.

And mostly - did you read? - the memories that go with it of Sunday breakfast back home with Mom and Dad when we were kids.

The theme here that most seem to be mentioning is that Comfort Foods are about memories/family traditions!
Jack on July 18th, 2008 11:04 am

You got two of my three favorite comfort foods:

Banana Bread
Homemade Brownies
Ice cream

J

http://adventuresinvoluntarysi.....gspot.com/
Marci on July 18th, 2008 11:06 am

All these mentions of Banana Pudding! Time to make some this weekend for the grandkids!

Looby - Champ sounds interesting - are the onions mashed or creamed also? or cut and lumpy? And I’m with you on the back bacon!

Monroe - Do you use a special bread for the fruit stuffed french toast? Sounds like something the grandkids would love - they ask me to cook french toast for them a lot!
Lisa on July 18th, 2008 2:36 pm

Comfort food for me would be rice with butter and a bit of salt. Simple and yummy.

For Christmas I used to make a great chocolate pecan pie which was to die for. Until dear daughter developed allergies to pecans and now it is off the menu since it is literally too die for.

I know it sounds silly but every Christmas morning we have Pillsbury cinnamon rolls. I made them one year when I was absolutely exhausted and the next year my son requested them. We only have them for Christmas. They get angry if I try to serve them any other time of year
Looby on July 18th, 2008 2:38 pm

@ Marci- ha- I had to laugh at justadogs comment! do you think a steak would pass muster and it’s just ground up meat that is an issue?
The spring onions in the champ are just chopped up (I think they may be green onions in the US? Scallions?) and stirred into the mash, it’s really very delicious.
As a very happy omnivore myself I checked out scrapple on wikipedia and see it is somewhat similar to what we call white pudding (yum), often served at breakfast with (how could I not have mentioned it earlier) my ultimate comfort food- an Ulster fry or full Irish!
Amiyrah on July 18th, 2008 2:45 pm

Meatloaf is my new comfort food. My mom never made it when I was younger, so once I had my own family, I decided to give it a go. It is always a plate cleaner! Another favorite: chicken parmagiana. Italian food is my favorite type of food(I even make the meatloaf “italian”) so pretty much anything italian makes my skirt fly up.
Angela Fehr on July 18th, 2008 3:22 pm

Definitely homemade buns. My mom was given this recipe and our family has won awards at the country fair for them. They are soft, delicious, and quick(er) to make than most. I’ve posted the recipe on my blog http://hangingoutthewash.blogs.....-buns.html
Marci on July 18th, 2008 3:30 pm

Lisa’s comment about rice and butter made me realize I forgot to mention GRITS and a big dollop of melting butter in the middle! The ultimate in comfort!
Susan on July 19th, 2008 6:40 am

One of my favorite comfort foods is homemade baked bread, nice and warm from the oven and slathered with a little bit of butter… Mmmmm!
Denise on July 20th, 2008 8:38 am

Our family’s favorite comfort food is chicken and rice. I make this in the winter when I have the stock and leftovers from a whole chicken.
Ryan McLean on July 20th, 2008 5:55 pm

I LOVE Banana Bread!
I have found that eating banana bread is a great frugal way to eat out. I often go out for breakfast with my girlfriend and just get a banana bread each. We get away with it for about $4 each which is great for the experience.
Tammy on July 21st, 2008 3:53 am

I love Pumpkin Pie but I live in Egypt but I can not find any vegtable shortening here so I don’t know what to use for making the crust….Oh what to do does anyone have any sujestions or a grandmother to tell you what her mom or grandmother used back in the day?thank you for sharing.Tammy
Marci on July 21st, 2008 11:55 am

@Tammy - Back in the “old days” they mostly used Lard, which is rendered pig/hog fat, for the pie crust. But if you can’t find shortening, you probably aren’t going to find lard. If by chance you have a pork roast to bake, you could first trim every inch of back fat off the roast before baking, and then render it out for your lard. You can probably find directions for rendering lard somewhere on the internet. It’s fairly simple - cook in down, strain it, and cool it. Fat from ham wouldn’t work as it’s been brined.

A second suggestion would be to try butter - real butter. If you tried a margaring it would have to be one with a very low % of water in it. You might just have to experiment some.
Marci on July 21st, 2008 12:03 pm

@ Tammy:
Oh I found an old 1920 era recipe.

Calls for 2 Qts flour, 1 cup lard, 1 cup butter,
1 T salt, 1 T sugar, and 1.5 cups cold water.

Says you may omit the lard and use ALL butter, but to increase the butter to 2.5 cups instead of 2 cups. Lard makes the crust tender and flaky - butter gives it the good flavor.

I included the recipe so you would have the proportions you need to cut it down. Obviously, the above recipe makes several pie crusts.
Marci on July 21st, 2008 12:05 pm

Render bear fat also works THE BEST for baking - but you probably won’t find that there either