stew!

COMFORT FOOD
wikipedia: familiar, simple foods that are usually home-cooked or eaten at informal restaurants. They are foods that are often emotionally significant to a person or group of people and are sometimes related to pleasant associations of childhood.

by urbandictionary:
euphemism for tasty, satisfying foods of high caloric content relative to little nutritional value, term is utilized exclusively by individuals who can least afford to consume such foods to rationalize consumption of foods with no other value except "comfort."
n. foods which increase the comfortable, luxurious padding on a .....
ex: "Sheena looked down when she dropped her candy bar, but the comfort food seemed to disappear completely. Had it fallen down her cleavage, or was it near her feet? She wasn't quite sure."

and so tonight- we made stew! Or should I say, ALL DAY we made stew. How? you ask? 1 word my urbansuburban friends- CROCKPOT!
Reg and I discovered the crockpot a few weeks ago. Sure, we've had one for years, but usually it sits, along with our other unplanned-monochromatic-red appliances, faking that we are grownups. We jumped into the crockpot head first (well, not literally, obviously) with a curried lamb dish that made our house smell amazing and was much tastier than expected.
Yes, lamb is a red meat, and No- crockpot lamb is not minced or ground or in sausage-form, the only ways I normally take my red meat. But I ate it!
which brings us back to tonight- we made beef stew DIRECTLY from the crockpot recipe book. an OLD crockpot recipe book with yellowing pages and no nutritional information. It was swimming with fatty beef that just melted in your mouth (or, actually, my mouth), carrots, celery, red potatoes, onions, and a bay leaf, of course. We came home from work, leaves crunching under our feet, sun shining on our heads, holding hands (yes, I know, but I aim to speak the truth here), and entered our house for beefy-stewy-smelly-goodness and all was perfect for the season! Added some pinot noir, and we were off to the gustatory races!
My mom used to make crockpot stew, and Reg grew up with all kinds of Haitian stews (full of his own exotic touches like conch and eggplant, as familiar to him as potatoes and carrots are to me). A comfort food evening in the new autumn gillefond urbansuburban tradition!