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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UCSC chapter.

I must admit, I enjoy consuming food. I enjoy having McDonald’s breakfast early in the morning, I love eating medium-boiled eggs (8 minutes for the win!!) as a snack, and dear Shiva, I love eating a chicken sandwich at any time of the day.

While enjoying my food is nearly always the case, there are some foods in particular that serve a very distinct role in my life. Please let me introduce you to the wonderful world of comfort foods. 

Comfort foods are a specific genre of food that feel safe and familiar. In my opinion, comfort foods feed your soul more than they satiate your hunger (although that is the purpose of food I guess). For the sake of being well-researched though, I will mention that Google cites comfort foods as being high in carbohydrates and is associated with childhood or home-cooking.

For me, not many of my comfort foods are actually homecooked, but if they are, it’s because it’s either an easy recipe that I know how to make, or it’s something that my father used to make for me.

These foods hold a very special place in my heart, so if you personally don’t enjoy them, kindly, choke.

I love Subway

No, no, no, no, no. You don’t understand, I love Subway. My roommate, Briana, has decided that this is my toxic trait, but you know what, I simply do not care. Subway subs feed my soul. I will buy Subway whenever I’m feeling out of whack. There is so much comfort found in a footlong sub that I made up when I was ten-years-old and haven’t strayed from since. Further, I am a sandwich girl, and there is nothing better for a sandwich girl than a 12-inch sub. I know Subway isn’t particularly good for me though, so I typically only buy a sub when I’m really down in the dumps.

Let Me Chef Up Some Gigi Hadid’s Vodka Pasta

Ya see, this pasta is the more elevated cousin of my Subway addiction. If I have the willpower to make Gigi Hadid’s Vodka Pasta, I’m doing fairly well, and my comfort is mostly derived from relying on a food I know intimately. This pasta takes me no longer than 40 minutes to make, it’s easy, and after I’ve made and ate it, I feel like I accomplished a lot. Plus, it’s also really yummy reheated (which is my favorite part of making this mean–two meals in one!).

Daddio’s Breakfast Potatoes

In addition to being a sandwich girl, I am also very much a potato girl. I love potatoes in all their forms except for sweet potatoes, and I must humbly state that my father makes the BEST potatoes. He makes marvelous roasted potatoes. I cherish every potato he puts in his famous chicken curry, but my favorite potatoes of his are his breakfast potatoes. These potatoes are savory and remind me of Saturday morning’s with the news playing in the background. When I went away to college, my father used to make me tupperwares of breakfast potatoes for me to eat so I’d have a taste of home. Now that I live in my own apartment, I make my own breakfast potatoes, but I must admit, they truly pale in comparison to my fathers.

An Ode to Taco Bell’s Chicken Chalupa

I’m back to my fast-food ways. I think it’s fairly common (or at least more common than Subway) comfort food, and I take comfort in that. When I was young, my mom would pick me up from school and if she had gone to Taco Bell with her co-workers, she’d bring me a chalupa. Similar to Subway, this has been my order from Taco Bell for nearly 15 years, and I don’t see it changing soon. However, where my mental health might be withering when I get Subway, I am simply at peace when I buy Taco Bell. If anything, Taco Bell serves as self-care, where I get to eat my delicious chicken chalupa and read a wonderful book.

I hope I convinced you all to try my comfort foods, and if I didn’t, I hope you love your comfort foods a bit more.

My name is Ashti (she/her), I am currently an undergraduate History of Asia and the Pacific major with an Education minor at UCSC.