Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

A sauce made with sliced breakfast sausages, cream of chicken soup, Hellman's mayonnaise, lemon juice, ground pepper, broccoli, shredded aged cheddar on top and served over pasta or rice. The sauce smells vile but it actually tastes delicious and I would even go so far as call it comfort food. I often find myself craving this sauce during winter.

Cooking is like my daily meditative art. If something is bothering me, it's apparent by the complexity of what I'm making and whether I'm not bothering with a recipe or measuring.

Aggression Cookies - I LOVE IT!

I find taking root vegetables and firm peppers and making perfect tiny dice out of them conquers two problems. 1. I'm not cutting up the object of my aggression and 2) I'm left with a fridge full of beautifully diced produce.

Brioche is another "stress reliever." You really have to beat the bejeezus out of that bread while kneading it. I have an ex-husband who's alive today because I brunoised every carrot I could get my hands on and made a TON of brioche.

Anything in the kitchen, including washing dishes by hand and cleaning the oven or refrigerator, is therapeutic and healing. Or next to the kitchen, at the table, like looking through cookbooks or eating. Actually, one of my 10 favorite things in life is eating while reading cookbooks.

This topic reminded me of a recipe I copied out of a magazine in 1970. Christmas came two months after I got married and I made these cheap and easy cookies to include in goodie packages. It's been a holiday staple ever since, not because they taste great--they're just so-so, but because of tradition.

Aggression Cookies

1 cup brown sugar
1 cup butter
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon soda
2 cups oatmeal, not steel-cut

Put all the ingredients in a large bowl. Squish, mix, pound, pinch, knead and crumble everything together--don't be shy and nice--until the oatmeal is moistened, the mixture can be formed into a ball of dough (slap the ball once or twice if you feel the need) and all your tension has dissipated, at least five minutes.

Form dough into one-inch balls and place on ungreased (or parchment-lined) cookie sheets. Flatten with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for about ten minutes on the middle rack of the oven.

I love making stuffing when I'm having a hard day. It's such a comforting, homey food but not all that difficult to throw together. Plus I love the tactile experience of crunching up the bread and then mixing all the wet ingredients with your hands.

I like to slicing raw meat, especially trimming the fat off.

BEER... I like shopping for strange beers and then coming home and cooking somethin complicated while I drink.

:)

Just had this one, recipe follows for all of you seriously in need of upping your cholesterol levels:

Boil or bake a potato and keep hot. Soft boil an egg: The white should just be set and the yolk still runny. Cut a cross in the potato and squeeze to expose inside and create a hollow. Add salt and a generous dollop of butter. Slice the top off the egg and dribble/scoop the yolk into the potato. Top with grated Tusser's or Cheddar cheese and shredded pepper ham. Pig out.

in compliance with my low-carb diet...
low carb "nachos"
layer deep fried pork rinds in a pan,* sprinkle on some hot sauce, then smother with an assortment of sliced cheeses (pre-shredded will not do!)
place in broiler until cheese is bubbly.
*best when using the ultra large pork rinds found in Mexican groceries
eat immediately. keep a cell phone within reach to dial 911!

@butterfingers -

oh
my
gosh.

my sister used to eat that!
you two are two in a million i would assume LOL

@betteirene -- I'm afraid that regional American cooking is going to disappear. Between chain restaurants, cookbooks and magazines, eating and cooking is getting much more homogenized.

I'm a fan of sugar cream pie, I just don't eat it daily -- or even monthly. I had the butter and sugar sandwiches when I was a youngster -- also peanut butter and brown sugar. I'm not sure that a butter/sugar sandwich is any worse than grilled cheese made with processed cheese food.

There's also some evidence that by adding the bacon or bacon grease to greens, for instance, you make them taste better and people eat more of the greens. The fat makes some of the nutrients in the greens more accessible.

@MarvinDog -- I think the French might be surprised to find out that duck confit is unhealthy.

@tacoo -- It's all about moderation. Unfortunately, over the last 30 years or so we've been taught that if a lot of something is bad, then none is best.

It's a tossup among three for me:

As a child I LOVED white bread and mayonnaise sandwiches with my Pepsi... luckily, Grandma wouldn't let me have them - I had to sneak them. ~Shudder~

With holidays/Winter approaching, time to break out the fudge, too. My fave is basically sweetened condensed milk and choccolate chips. Mmmm, sugar, fat and chocolate - what's not to love?

And, I hate to admit that lately I've had a hankering for college food, specifically Chili Casserole: Canned chili (my favorite rhymes with 'Shtennison's Not') layered with oodles of cheddar cheese and corn tortillas and baked. Doesn't seem that bad until you read the ingredients on the can (what IS 'textured protein'?!) and realise the cheese is basically about a pound of hydrolised fat... The only healthy thing in it is the 6 corn tortillas.

But then, nowadays opening a can of anything but organic tomatoes feels sinful, so who am I to judge?