These warm-and-creamies all tend to be higher-carb, higher-fat foods that can make you sleepy, so I suppose that’s a comfort – eat a big serving, curl up under a quilt, and instant comfort!  All of a sudden, winter isn’t so cold and dark, and you’ve got some extra insulation to get you through the cold months!

  Nostalgia also seems to be a part of my comfort foods.  A pile of warm, fresh, corn tortillas will take me back, and I will happily eat ‘em up.  My grandmother always seemed to serve lamb chops with mint jelly on the side, with mashed potatoes (with the skins on!) loaded with butter – so medium rare lamb chops/mint jelly and buttery mashed potatoes takes me back to being a spoiled six-year-old allowed to sit at the grown-up table, eating grown-up food!

  But I have summertime comfort foods, too.  Dead-ripe tomatoes, eaten right off the vine!  Fresh black-eyed peas!  Fresh dewberries, complete with thorns and peaches picked that afternoon!  Okra, dipped in cornmeal and eggs, fried and served too hot to pick up – and finish up with home-made peach ice cream.  Can’t think of anything better.

  Our choices of foods, how they make us feel – I know that there is a lot of biochemistry there, neurotransmitters, insulin, serotonin – but those polysyllables don’t come close to defining comfort food.  Part of comfort food is the friends and family we share it with.

Our nuclear family had a 100% voter turnout this cycle. Mrs. Translator and I voted absentee, hers for health reasons and mine for being out of range. But that is not the important part.

Two of the three of our sons live out of county. They blew off my advice to order an absentee ballot.

I thought that they would just forget about it. I really did.

Eldest Son drove back, and waited three hours to do the early voting thing yesterday. He is 22.

Middle Son, who lives locally, went the the polling place today and voted. That is two out of three boys. He is 20.

Youngest son, realizing that he was too late to vote with the absentee ballot, drove for two hours round trip and voted at his home precinct. He is 18.

I did not ask any of them how they voted. But, vote, they did. That is the important thing.

Mrs. Translator and I agreed in voting for Obama, but we disagreed in the House and Senate races. That does not matter.

What matters is that we had a 100% turnout, regardless of how the votes were cast.

Warmest regards, and you live in a district with polls still open, get over there and vote, and please tell us how things are going where you are.

Doc