Daily Dose of English 90
Comfort Food
Daily Dose of English 90
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about comfort food. Comfort food, not really food that is comfortable, but gives you a sense of comfort is what we call comfort food, really. And it's a relatively common thing to talk about and to think about and to eat because a lot of people like comfort. And I thought it'd be a fun episode to talk about different kinds of comfort food, what it might mean, and that sort of thing. So in general, comfort food is some sort of food that makes you feel happy and safe and comfortable with where you are, and that sort of thing. For a lot of people, it's something that's warm and is familiar, and it's something maybe from their home country, and it's this sort of comfort food. almost nostalgic food as well. Some people, their comfort food isn't very good. They know that it's not the best food and they don't like it that much, but it is comfortable and it makes them feel good. It's also very nice to have when you're sick or when you're having trouble or you're sad or something like that, because it is usually sort of soul filling, I guess. Yes, it fills your belly, but it also fills your soul to make you feel good. A classic example of an American comfort food is chicken noodle soup. Chicken noodle soup is pretty common in most of the U.S. as a food to eat when you're sick or when you're tired or when you're just sort of wanting a little bit of that comfort because it's warm, it's filling, it's delicious. And we do it with the noodles in the U.S. so we call it chicken noodle soup. So with pasta and so there's also that just Pasta is just good to fill up the soul. And so chicken noodle soup is definitely a good comfort food. It's also great when you're sick and you want a little bit of that soul warming-ness from your food and that sort of thing. I definitely really like chicken noodle soup when I'm feeling sick or just want a nice, very full meal that'll feel homely. I think that's another part of comfort food is that it feels like something from home. It doesn't make you feel like you're in a restaurant or you're somewhere totally random and foreign, but instead at home, maybe that your mom or grandma made for you, and it just makes you feel safe, I guess we can also say. It's comforting, right? So chicken noodle soup is definitely a comfort food, but there's all sorts of different kinds depending on how you grew up or what you like to eat, and I think we can go into that a little bit. I briefly mentioned comfort food not always being the most healthy, and that's actually probably pretty common. Chicken noodle soup can be quite healthy, right? Especially if you don't have the noodles, everything else is pretty good for you. But a lot of comfort food is unhealthy. So fried food or lots of butter or cream and something that is more for the soul than for the health of whoever's eating it. An example of that is definitely something like fried chicken or other southern food is often comfort food. And it's usually made with a whole heck of a lot of butter or lard, which is just not as healthy as it can be. Also, a lot of people like to have pizza as a comfort food because it's so common and safe and delicious and filling. I'm not talking about fancy pizza where it's really nice, it's got interesting toppings on it. regular, I don't know, Domino's pizza or cheap pizza that you get to fill your soul and to be bready and just have that almost like artificial flavor just because it is a different thing that you might want. A lot of people also have fast food as sort of comfort food, which is why if you go abroad, if you go to other countries, you will often see people that are foreign eating at fast food restaurants because it's familiar. I don't know if I explained that great but for example a lot of Americans when they travel so they're in what Europe or Japan or something they're far away from home and they aren't eating local food because they are craving, they want this foreign food. They want something else. They want something, sorry, they're craving home food. They're craving comfort food, which reminds them of home. And so if they eat a lot of fast food at home, then they're gonna wanna go for that because they know that and it's safe and that sort of thing. Same goes for things like Starbucks. Starbucks is very popular all over the world, not only among locals, but also among people that travel because they can expect something to be the same. They know that they can order something and get a very similar quality anywhere in the world. And that's understandable, right? Not everybody wants to always be surprised and have something totally new for dinner or for lunch or whatever. And so I can understand that it's a bit of this homesickness and wanting to have something like home and feel comforted. However, when you travel, you should also try to try new things and local foods and see what's interesting, because you might find a different sort of soul food that makes you feel good, or comfort food, sorry. Soul food is a little bit different, especially in the US. Other good comfort foods are, for me actually, ends up being soups. I really like soup, and soup makes me feel comforted. There's a meal that I would eat very often growing up, which is a potato and leek soup with some cream and butter, and it makes it very thick and delicious, with chicken, just sort of typical, easy chicken thighs and this soup. is for me a pretty comforting food because it's what we would eat really often, and it reminds me of my mother's cooking. It's not like she cooked very much, but it definitely makes me feel good to eat that sort of simple chicken thighs and potato leek soup, even though it's like seven ingredients total. Salt, pepper, chicken, and then potatoes, leeks, cream, I guess water is maybe an ingredient. So yeah, seven, but that's really everything that you'd put in there and it'd be just delicious food. There's a lot more comfort food as well, depending on where you're from, right? So when I think of some Mexican comfort food, I think of things like pozole or even like just going to get some barbacoa or if you are into other kinds of tacos, depending on what you maybe grew up with or eat a lot. And so for me, barbacoa has definitely become a comfort food because it's always going to be good and you get the broth on the side, which is called consome. and having that broth with chickpeas and with rice is very comforting to me. It's very warm and it just tastes very delicious and so that's definitely become a comfort food for me as well. I've also seen Well, I mean, obviously there's comfort foods all over the world, but when I think of other foods that are comforting to me is, again, I'm thinking of more soup. So ramen is a comfort food, especially cup, not cup ramen, like instant ramen, ramen that you make from a package is very comforting to me as well. because I make it with a couple of extra things, some dumplings, some broccoli or whatever, and then it becomes this full bowl, full bowl, full bowl, yeah, a full bowl of comforting, delicious soup with noodles. Oh yeah, just noodles in general are definitely comforting for me. I feel like I'm talking about a bunch of different things. Right now I'm just thinking of food because I'm hungry, but I hope that that's okay. and doesn't bother you but anyways I'm kind of running out of time here but my whole point with comfort food is that if you are feeling a little bit sad or you're extra hungry or you're sick or something like that having a comfort food is a great way to refill your soul and your belly and is a very nice way to Also to like invite somebody into what you enjoy. And so if you have a guest over or maybe your partner is from somewhere else in the world, showing them what your comfort food is can be a really fun experience. But we're at time for this episode and I don't really want to just keep listing out comforting foods because I think that'd be kind of boring. And so I thank you very much for listening to this kind of weird episode. Sorry that it was less planned and I kind of just talked about food for 10 minutes, but hopefully that's not a problem because it'll probably happen again since I do really like food. But anyways, that's all that I got for you today. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Have a good one. Buh-bye!
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