Pastina. Really tiny pastas, loads of butter, blended veggies, and some salt. It tastes like healing and home.
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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Mental Health
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Really taking in and focusing on the sensations of a hot cup of coffee can do it for me. The smell, the taste, the warmth both from holding the mug and also when drinking it.
Shepherds pie/cottage pie
6 layer lasagna with a little ricotta extra mozzarella
호박죽 (ho bak juk, pumpkin porridge). Many a cold morning in the ROK, this was my breakfast.
Actually, a lot of my comfort foods are porridge based: cream of wheat, corn meal porridge, steel-cut oats, rolled oat oatmeal, oatmeal and raisin cookies.
mac and cheese with bacon crumbles.
Tortilla soup.
Pho.
Warm soupy liquid handmade by someone with love always hits that feeling for me :)
A steaming bowl of chili and some fry bread.
White bean, leek, and potato soup, with a small amount (2-3 strips) bacon added.
Its a fucking hug alright
I like to take half the white beans and emersion blend them, and add it back in, so its a creamy soup with no cream.
Im making it today as my husband is home sick from work. Just using cabbage today, instead of leeks because it was cheaper.
America's Test Kitchen "Comfort Food" book
I'm providing you with the search-results, instead of that specific book ( if they have that specific one ) because you may find their anti-inflammatory-diet book more healing, which would reduce your felt-need for comfort, or you may prefer any one of the others, for whatever reason.
See the whole set!
They're incredibly-good.
"Cook's Illustrated" magazine turned into them, years ago.
_ /\ _
PS: the foods most-likely to feel like a hug to someone, are the foods that remind them of when they were too young to be drowning in anxiety/stress.
No matter what they were.
Those are the ones which are wired into our memory as being "before everything became more stressful/bad", & that is one fundamental reason for "comfort food" category to exist in us.
It was the insight of someone from India that pointed that one out to me, can't remember what writing it was in, sorry.
_ /\ _
i think you're spot on,
but remember or know that not all people's diets are inflammatory. so there isn't necessarily something to fix in a diet like mine which hasn't had sugar, alcohol, meat nor heavily processed food with added preservatives pesticides... for years. locally grown vegetables and ecological vegetarian restaurants are plentyful in european big cities.
nor does the food i was served in my youth bring as much joy since it was a troubled youth with domestic abuse.
so remember now that what you're right about isn't a silver bullet to release oxytocin during a meal. i'm leaving you an upvote =)