h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I can always rely on the h2g2 editors to come up with some great talking points, and comfort food is something I know A LOT about!!

What is your all-time number one favourite comfort food?

Pasta in cheese sauce. It goes back to when I used to live in Canada and when I was ill my Mum used to make me Kraft Macaroni and Cheese from a box. This was very exotic because usually Mum would cook everything from scratch. I loved it! It was the first thing I ever cooked by myself, and now I am an adult I love preparing it from scratch for myself.

Do you have a ritual, a bit of scene-setting to get the preparation just right, to maximise the comfort zone?

Generally the only requirement for me to indulge in my comfort food is a really shockingly awful day. So if the traffic was bad coming home, or work was a total nightmare from the outset, or even if the day is particularly rainy and horrible, I will crave my comfort food.

Is comfort food, by definition, unhealthy food? Or can it be healthy? Can you curl up on a sofa and munch on a raw carrot?

I must confess, I have never noticed that comfort food is healthy food. I try and make pasta and cheese sauce with low fat ingredients (and it is surprisingly good actually!) but I never tell myself it is healthy for me, because that would spoil the comfort aspect of it.

Is your comfort food the type you get delivered from a take-away restaurant? Do you like the build-up, the anticipation of waiting for the pizza delivery man to ring the bell?

Ah, now then. This is the difference between comfort food and what some people refer to as comfort eating. I prefer to call it punishment eating, because usually if you are indulging in crappy takeaway food then you are probably sub-consciously punishing yourself for something. Or at least, I usually am!

Is your comfort food a bit more emotional, connected to a memory: puddings your mother made; food from a foreign land?

My comfort food is definitely linked to that emotional, warm and snugly feeling. If I am coming down with a cold I will fancy eating pasta and cheese sauce for about a week in advance. And I also get very creative all of a sudden, which is completely off topic, but there you have it!

Do you like to cook your comfort food?

I love to cook my comfort food. It is quick, filling, cheap and makes me feel good into the bargain.

Is comfort food something you like to eat on your own or can it be a shared experience?

I can share my comfort food experience, but obviously if you are gluten or lactose intolerant, then it is probably not wise for you to indulge!!

Do you have absolutely no need for any form of pathetic so-called 'comfort' food, seeing instead food as simply necessary fuel for optimum physiological performance?

I would find it hard to believe there is anyone on the planet like this, but wow, if there is… My hat is off to you! Mental strength in spades!!

Great response as usual, Crickett. I'm having pasta and cheese sauce for lunch today I think.

Thank you (I'm blushing!)

What is your all-time number one favourite comfort food?

- Stuffed potatoes: Baked potatoes where their insides have been scooped out, mashed with cream, cheese, mustard (lots of mustard) and paprika and then put back into their skins and finshed off under the grill.

Do you have a ritual, a bit of scene-setting to get the preparation just right, to maximise the comfort zone?

- It usually goes with a nice bit of easy watching comedy. Oh, and possibly a blanket.

Is comfort food, by definition, unhealthy food? Or can it be healthy? Can you curl up on a sofa and munch on a raw carrot?

- I'm with Crickett on this one, absolute crap food doesn't quite fit the bill. For a start, if it's too greasy you tend to feel oily and bloated after eating and that misses the point. I would go beyond repressed self-punishment and suggest that turning to greasy takeout food, for example, as a form of confort is evidence of a kind of existential dispair (the effort of placing myself into homecooked food, or even making the identity defining choice of half-decent food from elsewhere is too much, I want something in which I can lose myself in dispair....) Don't get me wrong, I love some greasy takeout food, but I choose it when I'm in the right mood, not when I need something conforting. Equally, however, I think that pure 'health' food is the opposite extream to pure junk (and anyone who knows their existentialism will realise that that makes health food near identical to the junk it tries to distance itself from...) In the end, I think comfort food needs to be something you enjoy eating and feel good about afterwards (which is why chocolate can fit the bill, the endorphines do wonders!) This also means that it depends on what your body is currently in need of: if it only needs a few endorphines, chocolate is great, if you've been dreanched to the skin by freezing rain, chips make the bill, if your hungry and need something to fill you up that doesn't require too much effort on a cold winter's night, my stuffed potatoes win everytime.

Is your comfort food the type you get delivered from a take-away restaurant? Do you like the build-up, the anticipation of waiting for the pizza delivery man to ring the bell?

- ... The anticipation of a take away could never beat the pure comfort of knowing that in an hour, maybe an hour and a half, those potatoes will be ready. You can smell them now. Hear them as the bake away. Nothing to worry about, especially not the needless extravagance of the takeout that your sure to regret once the meal is over.

Is your comfort food a bit more emotional, connected to a memory: puddings your mother made; food from a foreign land?

- I must say, I don't spend that much time recollecting the time when my dear friend, Sir Walter, brought that exotic crop to our shores. Good Norfolk potatoes, that's what the voice in my head says. Home grown, if possible. That voice also says other things. Fwibbit is one of them. Exterminate is another. It also tells me strange things about mutant children trying to take over the world... You can see why the comfort food is necessary.

Do like to cook your comfort food? Is it a Sunday lunch sort-of affair?

- Certainly, the minimal effort involved in the cooking process is part of the joy and I prefer to cook the food myself rather than let my wife do it - she never puts enough mustard in! It's about choosing the exact taste to fit my mood. But heaven forfend a major cook - I don't want to wash up afterwards!

Is comfort food something you like to eat on your own or can it be a shared experience?

- On my own or with my wife, it amounts to the same thing. Not with other's though. You just know that no one else would quite appreciate the food. Comfort food is a highly personal affair - different things comfort different people.

Do you have absolutely no need for any form of pathetic so-called 'comfort' food, seeing instead food as simply necessary fuel for optimum physiological performance?

- You, sir, are in bad faith.

Well lets set aside the fact that no food is actually unhealthy unless its actually poisonous and even then a little bit of poison as a purgative can have health enhancing effects.

Comfort foods tend to be "rich" because if something has more of what we like then chances are the thing it has more of be it sugar, salt or fat can exceed what is witnin the daily healthy parameters.

Comfort food like the first pint on a Friday or cigarettes lit up by passengers outside the longhaul arrivals exit at airports start to work before they hit the stomach and even before they are tasted. the anticipation of the treat lifts the spirits.

If you've ever sat with a group of freinds prior to a rave waiting fro a phone call from a dealer and watched the mood int eh room change the second a "special delivery" is made you'll know what I mean.

Comfort foods dont have to be familiar but the excitment you can get from trying new foods is to a certain extent on being in a positive frame of mind so if you are emotionlly down as opposed to having a cold or ear infection then you might not get the sasme lift you would from an old time favourite.

Happy memories that surround a food tend to help it have that "cockles of my heart" warming effect.

What's often overlooked is how we regularly incorporate "soul foods" into our everyday lives, but we do notice when we cant get our regular fix of tea/coffee or cchocolate bar.

My favourite comfort food has to be tinned tomato soup. It re connects me to my regular bouts of tonsilitis as a child, being free from school to while away the day reading and watching TV. It is linked with the care I was given when no other children were in the house and coupled with the memories of being coddled it is also the first hot food I ever made for myself so it represents indpendence too.

My ultimate comfort food is rice pudding, which is good for you, or at least not bad for you. I spent 7 months as a cook in a convent in Oxfordshire and I used to make rice pudding on a regular basis while listening to John Peel in the middle of the night. The ingredients were pudding rice, milk, sugar, and a pinch of cinnamon. I made it in a bain marie, which took hours, all of John Peel and then some.