'Home Comfort Foods' for Memorial Day

We had a 'Home Comfort Foods' celebration on Memorial Day. Everyone was to bring a favorite 'comfort' food. So of course, there was potato salad, 'goulash that no Hungarian would recognize,' Sicilian deep-dish pizza, Portuguese kale soup, green beans with bacon, cinnamon rolls, papas con chorizo...There was even a platter of McDonalds burgers and fries! And then, there were the jokers...

David said he was really looking for breast milk, but the banana baby food was actually quite good.

I wasn't sure how to feel about Phil trying to pass off the redback vole as comfort food, though...

 And yes, you're right--no 'Ela-friendly' food in the list so far (except for the baby food, lol)! So, what did I bring? I mentioned recently that I've been opening up to the exploration of 'what do I like?' I also wanted to bring something that we ate when I was a kid. The dessert part was a no-brainer for me, and I'll get to it in a moment. For the main course, though, I used the opportunity to explore Iraqi-Israeli recipes online and discovered that there are whole books devoted to it. I'm so looking forward to exploring more.

I made kitchri--Iraqi-Israeli rice and lentils, with the charred crust. Our cabin smelled like my grandmother's house and I smiled all day.

 I was so proud that I got the crust done! It's been forever since I made something like that.

 The dessert? I said it was a no-brainer: actually, mashed bananas and dates was a close contender and perfectly reflected by David's baby food, as it turned out. But when I was a kid--and a young adult, for that matter, I thought that if I couldn't live on fruit, I could live on cardamom rice pudding.

 It seems that every raw chef confesses to one food from the creamy-dairy world that they so missed and were so delighted to make in the raw. It never occurred to me until just recently that I had one too: that I would make cardamom rice pudding long after I'd given up dairy in any other form. Of course, traditional rice pudding is cooked in milk, then you add condensed milk too. And of course I wasn't going to do that this time! So I crockpotted the rice in lots of water and cardamom, added sweetener later, and added coconut milk for the creaminess. The crockpot was a wonderful tool for getting the rice super-soft and creamy. Oh, and the smell of cardamom infusing the air...Heaven.

Without the bad after-effects of the dairy now, if there weren't so many delicious raw foods that I prefer, I could still imagine wanting to live on this! Creamy, soft, smooth, sweet, cardamom, good either warm or chilled, topped with banana baby food or plain...

And, everyone else loved it too!
We always had a plate of carrot sticks at the dinner table when I was a kid, so I brought along carrot sticks too, and they were quite well-enjoyed, considering the vast spread of richer foods.

I also made sesame snaps. Boiled sugar and butter isn't my usual style, but Phil adores this stuff and it's definitely another middle-eastern item.

 Since there are now two semi-gluten-free folks in our circle besides myself, perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised to find a gluten free chocolate chip cookie on my plate. But it's been many years indeed since I ate a chocolate chip cookie.

 It's raining and murky today, but Memorial Day was gorgeous--sunny and warm. After our 'home comforts' dinner, we sat outside around the firepit at our friends' home and admired their new greenhouse.

I hope your Memorial Day was as delicious as ours was!
Please stay tuned for a book review and giveaway.