Comfort Food

My mom was a really good cook — nothing fancy — but she made superb comfort food. A terrific Rice Pudding. A killer Beef Stroganoff. A simple but exquisite Strawberry Shortcake when strawberries were in season with homemade biscuit-type cakes (2 layers), fresh just-picked strawberries and homemade whipped cream with vanilla bean. She wasn't a snob about cooking everything from scratch though, she also had her store-bought delicacies.

I just made one of her best comfort dinners — Stouffer's Welsh Rarebit. It's just a frozen box of cheddar cheese sauce, but it is so good. My mom would make one of the most fattening dinners in the world with that sauce, toast and bacon. Here's how.

Take two pieces of white bread, toast it, cut it in triangles. Cook up about 5 pieces of bacon — really good bacon. Crumble it on top of the toast. Pour the sharp cheddar cheese sauce on it. [Edith J from PA on the stouffers.com does it with tomato slices, but I think that throws off the texture big time. You don't want something wet and slippery competing with the cheddar cheese sauce.]