NO, don’t feel like you have to eat your feelings, and also if you’re really upset, you should just go buy something and have instant gratification that doesn’t need to thaw overnight in the fridge, but this thing is completely bananas and really soothing.
I heard a very gendered thing once that suggested that when men are asked to describe their favourite comfort foods they choose things that require effort (lasagnas, pot pies, meatloaf, etc.), and women are more likely to say things they will not have to cook themselves (ice cream), because when you’re a woman and you’re feeling down, ain’t no one making you a lasagna. Unless you do have someone to make you a lasagna, which is wonderful.
Gender norms hurt us all, abortions for some, lasagnas and caramel-y pull-apart rolls for everyone.
Then, too, there was Nora Ephron’s brilliant thing about mashed potatoes in Heartburn:
Nothing like mashed potatoes when you’re feeling blue. Nothing like getting into bed with a bowl of hot mashed potatoes already loaded with butter, and methodically adding a thin cold slice of butter to every forkful. The problem with mashed potatoes, though, is that they require almost as much hard work as crisp potatoes, and when you’re feeling blue the last thing you feel like is hard work. Of course, you can always get someone to make the mashed potatoes for you, but let’s face it: the reason you’re blue is that there isn’t anyone to make them for you. As a result, most people do not have nearly enough mashed potatoes in their lives, and when they do, it’s almost always at the wrong time.
Let’s not get sidetracked. You want to know how to make these ridiculous pull-apart rolls. My friend Aurora brought them over one night when she was watching Game of Thrones with me, and I was still standing in the kitchen licking my finger and pressing it into the (empty) pan hoping I’d somehow missed a pecan at two in the morning. THIS IS NOT HAUTE CUISINE, guys, this is just great:
2 loaves homemade or frozen bread dough (or frozen rolls, in which case you don’t really have to cut them into chunks after)
1/2 c. butter
1 c. brown sugar
1 lg. pkg. Jello butterscotch
(cook and serve kind, not instant)
2 tbs. milk
Cinnamon to taste
Nuts (optional, but not really: walnuts or pecans)
Leave loaves in refrigerator overnight to thaw. Grease a 9×13 inch pan and cut loaves with scissors into chunks. Put in pan. Melt butter. Add brown sugar, Jello pudding, and milk. Add cinnamon. Pour mixture over loaves. Let rise to top of pan, sprinkle chopped nuts on top. Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees.
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Tags: eating your feelings, food, recipes, the eternal genius of nora ephron
One of my favorite Simpsons jokes! Yay!
Mashed potatoes ARE the best. Sometimes when it gets really bad (or when I’m sad during the summer, and my kitchen is 1000000000 degrees), I will just buy the instant potato flakes, and dress them up with butter, cheese, and herbs.
The instant mashed potatoes are surprisingly good. I used them one Thanksgiving and no one complained. Adding extra butter and milk always helps.
Agreed, I like the instant! I buy the ones that are already flavored (Idahoan brand, every flavor I’ve tried is wonderful).
My second-or-third favorite Dutch food is the stamppot: mashed potatoes mixed with a vegetable (kale is traditional), little chunks of bacon, and served with a sausage on the side. Great thing.
hmmmm.
though when I’m eating my feelings I tend to prefer savouries. Like salt and vinegar flavoured *stuff* dipped into hummous.
Which is todays ‘my depression is playing up’ foodstuff.
YES. YES. Nobody will eat salt-and-vinegar crisps and hummous with me, and it is THE BEST. Bad days made better with strange savouries.
The thing is the texture is important. Regular potato crisps don’t work for me on this, because the texture is too fine and flat. It needs to be grainier, like tortilla chips or rice cakes/rice crisps, or it needs to be a metlier texture. Pom-bears are really good for this.
My old workplace sold both salt and vinager pom-bears AND hummous and gave me a 25% discount GUESS WHAT I ATE ON MY 15-MIN BREAKS.
Stange savouries make every terrible day better.
(at some point you should try quavers dipped in sweet chilli sauce. Cheap own-brand tortilla chips are good with sweet chilli too)
I had to look up Pom-bears, and my only regret is that they don’t exist in the US. I had imagined them to be happy bear snakcs, and reality did not disappoint me!
Also, according to the Amazon listing of regular flavored Pom Bears:
Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed:
-Pom Bear Original Snacks 6 Pack 150g, $11.98
-Totoro Cosplay Cloak Pro Version + Totoro 4.5cm Cute Min Pin, 4.6 out of 5 stars (44), $16.97
-Pom-Bear Cheese & Onion Snacks 6 X 19G, $8.90
One of these things is not like the other, and I love it.
Totoro cosplayers would totally love pombears though, so that’s OK.
OMG it’s savory potato-product snacks shaped like bears!! Why oh why are they not in America??
I know! Does our love of gummy bears not prove that we love bear-shaped snacks??
I would think it does but for all our fondness for weird Doritos and crunchy cheese things we have a long way to go to catch up to the UK’s talent for salty crunchy snacks.
Hello Panda – or, Hello, Panda!
But those are sweet, not savory… 🙁
Hi!
The UK doesn’t even have bears! As if!
They are THE BEST. Salt and vinegar is the hardest flavour to find in my local shops though. My local supermarket stocks smoky bacon, cheese and onion, plain and cheesy, but no salt and vinegar and it makes me saaaad all the time
They melt in the mouth!
Hummous? Savouries? Crisps? Pom-bears? COULD YOU PEOPLE BE ANY MORE BRITISH?
I’m pretty sure I could
Tea, queuing, rain, and quietly accepting absurdity. We could branch out into sweets and talk about Curly Wurlies; since my aunt emigrated she demands we post her some for every birthday and Christmas. This has now been going on several decades but her longing remains undimmed. She sends us marshmallow fish from New Zealand in return.
She can get Curly Wurlies in Australia!!!
I would KILL for a Curly Wurly right about now.
She can get Curly Wurlies in NZ?! Most dairies have them!
It seems to me that Aniseed Balls and Parma Violets are fairly british and also weird old-lady sweets that I really like
Here we go: This should do it.
My husband just reminded me that he LOVES salt-and-vinegar crisps and marmite sandwiches. On cheap white bread, for preference.
Cannot like this comment enough. You and yours have SUCH GOOD TASTE IN FOOD.
Do Americans not have hummous?!
We do, we just remove the O during the customs check.
We do, but we call it hummus, and we eat it (if we’re smart) with Pringle’s Salt & Vinegar chips.
Or Stacey’s Naked Pita chips, obvs.
Or, if you’re my kid, on a sandwich w/ jam & the Pringles & maybe a slice of salami, though really he prefers salami with his Nutella-chip sandwiches.
WITH JAM?
He’s weird.
On reeeeeeally bad days or reeeeeeally good days, I want to use kettle chips (in place of a spoon) to eat slightly softened ice cream. I’ve only done it a handful of times because I like to keep it as my break-glass-in-case-of-emergency foodstuff. It’s incredible.
Plain Kettle Chips dipped in nutella is a good one too
Chips dipped in chocolate are generally good. I had some at a party once.
See also: hot French fries dipped in chocolate milkshake. Salty, sweet, creamy, crispy, hot, cold, aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh.
That’s what we had for lunch yesterday when my sister & I were having a bad day at work.
Fries & chocolate milkshake satisfies every point of my comfort-food axis.
This looks amazing – can anyone help with a UK version of this jello butterscotch stuff? Angel delight? (but there isn’t a cook and serve kind.)
Oh wow, you dont have instant pudding in the UK??
Well we might do, but it depends what instant pudding *is*. Is it powder you mix with milk and whisk? And what is this cook and serve vs instant business?
It sounds like Angel Delight is the closest equivalent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Delight
?
Angel delight looks the same to me.
Yes, it is powder you mix with milk and serve. Instant requires only the whisking, and cook and serve needs to be boiled first and then set and chilled. It has a slightly different texture.
I think it is mostly in there as a flavoring so I have NO idea why you would want one over the other. Looking at the ingredients of both, they look almost identical – I doubt there would be a huge difference.
here is someone else wondering the same thing and answers seem to vary:
http://www.duncanhines.com/baking-tips/ingredient…
http://www.food.com/bb/viewtopic.zsp?t=325087
Marvellous, thankyou! I have some angel delight in the Cupboard of Joy so I can get on this!
This comment is delightful in every way.
Always happy to (angel) delight people! The cupboard of joy is well stocked. (It was originally the cupboard under the stairs in my old house where the cat toys lived, and the cats thought it was the source of all wonderment, but now I’ve moved and the cat toys live elsewhere, it’s my cupboard of sweets and chocolate and cake decoratey business.
I WANT ONE. My cake decorating stuff (and chocolate and other good and tasty things) is kind of everywhere because my kitchen lacks adequate storage space. I want a Cupboard of Joy.
I think the closest to cook-and-serve butterscotch pudding you can get in England would be Symington’s Table Cream, and I think the only place you can buy it is thirty years ago. I hope I’m wrong.
I am replying, because I need to know this, too. And also, maybe this evening I will have Angel Delight. I bloody love Angel Delight.
Everyone bloody loves Angel Delight. I have dinosaur cupcake moulds and I was coating them with melted chocolate and then filling them with Angel Delight. YUM.
that sounds amazing. angel delight is a much better name than jello pudding!!
It will be amazing when I have worked out how to get it out of the moulds without cracking. I have various experiments to make.
Plop the whole thing upside down on a platter or cutting board and heat the moulds (just a little) with a hairdryer. With any luck, they’ll fall right out.
That is my next plan, I went cold last time hoping they would pop out but I think the chocolate was too thin. May also dust with icing sugar beforehand.
This is exciting to know! I really like the names of the flavors too, like “forest fruits”. It sounds like they’re harvested by friendly elves and conveyed to the angels, to their delight.
Yesss, I was just going to ask about this. I actually have instant Jell-O pudding on my to-bring-from-US-in-dire-emergencies list and I keep forgetting it. Not gonna lie, I enjoy it in its “raw” powdered form as well.
This looks YUM! is it a little like bread and butter pudding?
Sometimes, when the world is bad and I’m feeling tired, my dinner will be a bowl of store bought mashed potatoes with extra butter and something on top like fried leeks and suddenly all is right.
It’s like cinnamon rolls, but different and softer.
Last time I was sulky/sad I had a dinner of hot wings and fries. It ruled.
Ohhhh I just remembered the most AWFUL moment: when I was a teenager and my best friend brought over a friend of hers who was having a bit of a rough time at home, and I happily brought out a giant packet of Oreos and was like, let’s eat these, we will feel better! and my friend pulled me aside to explain that her friend was a recovering bulimic so yeeeeeeeaaaaahhhhhhhhh eating the feelings was not a light-hearted matter for her.
*throws self away*
noooooooooooooooo 🙁
aaaaaargh, being a [teenager/young adult/human at any age] is full of those moments, isn’t it?
But at least you learned that lesson young: that emotional eating has different resonances for different people and you can’t guess by looking. I think I’m still learning that.
I like excessive doughy or goopiness when I’m depressed, or feeling down. One of my main comfort foods is a cheese enchilada, but I live in southern England where they don’t grow on trees (unlike LA, where I used to have an enchilada tree in the back yard), so if I want it, I have to be prepared to make it, with extra goopy cheese and tons of sauce. Otherwise, I tend to want to nearly choke myself on baked, carby things, such as these rolls, or cake. More dough, always.
This sounds like monkey bread with the addition of butterscotch pudding mix, which means it MUST be good.
I was gonna say the same thing. mmmm monkey bread, so many delicious memories.
I was going to say the same thing too.
Nicole, monkey bread uses refrigerated biscuit dough so it doesn’t need to be thawed like bread dough.
This will be great in about 2 months but right now anything that requires me to turn on my oven is the opposite of comfort food. Until October I will subsist solely on ice cream and wine.
There are no Pom-bears in Northern Virginia. This must be rectified ASAP. My boss is in London; I will beg her to bring some on her next trip. I feel as though America is falling behind in the Advanced Snack Category. No Pom-bears! No O’s in our hummus! I blame Republicans.
<3 u EPWordie!
<3
Speaking of gendered. I’m pretty sure I’m (really, truly) PMSing because I’m having the shittiest, most emotional day, and just started crying because I realized I do have someone to make me a lasagna so why am I even complaining about anything ever, et cetera.