My All Time Favorite Comfort Food

My Story Question of the week was “What is your all-time comfort food and why?” So here it goes.

Poached eggs on toast is my all-time favorite comfort food! The reason goes way back to my childhood. I could say it is a safe soft, a loving spot, a wounded spot but I will say I do like my poached eggs on toast. My second favorite comfort food is “gas house eggs.” Both stem from that same safe, loving, wounded spot. And I really love fried taters cooked with onions in bacon grease.

When I was a little girl my Granny and Grandaddy Keaton lived on a farm in Newark, Ohio on old route 40. The farm was 165 acres, including a huge barn for milking cows and a large chicken house. Grandaddy had a tree swing at the side of the house which I enjoyed when we visited. The house was close to the road and the barn was down the hill. The few weeks I could spend with Granny and Grandaddy in the summer are my most vivid memories of feeling safe and loved. Granny and Grandaddy showed me a kind of love I never felt elsewhere in my childhood. It is love I have struggled to have a glimpse of ever since they sold the farm.

That big ole house was something special. Glancing back there I recognize my memories of their mansion are an old two-story home with wallpaper falling off the walls, a coal furnace with registers in the floors, plumbing that never worked, clutter galore everywhere, and a kitchen without cabinets and everything piled high. But I loved being there. My brothers and I would get a bath on Saturday in a big old washtub on the kitchen floor. I was first, then my brothers, then Granny and finally Grandaddy could wash up. Afterall, we had to be clean because we would all pile up in the back of the pickup truck and go to church on Sunday. During the week we would go to the barn and sit on the cows while Grandaddy milked the cows. (My little brother Ray attempted to milk Dutchess, their boxer dog. That is a picture I will never forget). Afterwards we would shovel the cow manure and spread lime and hay. Then we would gather eggs. Granny would hang chickens on the clothesline, chop their heads off and then we would “dress” them so she could take them to the market. “Dress” them actually means undressing them by removing the feathers. Granny and Grandaddy had an assembly line in the basement of the old house that had burned. I can still remember the stench of those chickens going through that assembly line with a hot water dipping and feather removal. I would be at the bottom of the line and was assigned to pick the pin feathers out by hand.

Another favorite at the farm was helping to bale hay. I would be on the back of the wagon and tried to help stack the bales of hay or in the loft of the barn helping to stack the bales. When we were not baling hay, I could play on the back of the wagon. My brothers and I would dance around on the wagon, jump off, climb back on, play cowboys and Indians. Those days were filled with being able to play freely without fear of reprimand, judgement, or punishment. We would eat grapes off the grape vines, pick blackberries and raspberries, plant corn or tobacco, ride the mules or donkeys or whatever they were. We would ride on the wagon out to the apple orchard and sit under the apple trees with Grandaddy. He would take out his nasty dirty pocketknife and scrape apples for us to eat off his knife. It was so much fun. When anyone asks me where my mind goes when looking for peace it is always under the big apple tree in a field of apple trees and fallen apples. Apples do not taste as good as those Grandaddy scraped for us. My memories are massive of the fun and excitement of being on the farm. The old house had a huge back porch. It was screened in, and we played out on the porch often. Granny gave us hammers and nails and we learned how to hammer those nails in the floor of that wood porch. Grandaddy was a carpenter/mason by trade. He said a good carpenter could get a nail in three hits of the hammer. I am still challenged with hitting the nail three times and no more. When my Aunt Billie was still at home she would sell produce from the farm at the roadside in front of the house. When I was old enough Granny set me up a little produce stand down from Aunt Billie’s stand. It was so much fun sitting by the road anxiously awaiting someone to pull over and buy my produce. I would sit up in the tree by my stand until a customer stopped by. I felt like a real grown-up girl having my own little “store” by the road. We would go weekly to Borden’s, the company who bought the milk from Grandaddy. He and Granny would go in and come back to the truck with all kinds of ice cream and ice cream treats. We were so excited. Granny would fix a bowl of vanilla ice cream and pour Hershey’s chocolate syrup on top and mix it all up. That was an amazing treat, one of which we were not accustomed. Granny and Grandaddy did everything they could to make sure we knew we were loved, protected, and provided for. They were the closest picture of God’s love I ever knew.

So, why are poached eggs on toast my comfort food? Because my Granny would make me poached eggs or “gas house” eggs every morning and at lunch if I wanted and for supper if I did not like what she had planned. Poached eggs take me back to the place I felt most safe and most loved. That place and my cherished Grandparents are where my memories are visited in my most trying and difficult moments of life. Come on, pull up a chair and have a couple of poached eggs on toast with me and know that all will be right with the world.

Janie Roberts Davis 07/28/2025