Comfort food: baked potatoes

A recipe to keep you company.

Call it the change of season, call it the isolation, call it the strange time everyone in the world is experiencing at the moment, but over the past few weeks I’ve found myself making my favourite comfort foods for dinner over and over again.

Why is there such a thing as comfort foods? Research shows food is a popular coping strategy for people in times of uncertainty or emotional fatigue.

In other words, when everything goes belly up it helps to have something to look forward to, something familiar, something, well, comforting.

For me, baked potatoes are the ultimate comfort food. There’s nothing in this world that can beat a crispy skinned potato with a soft, fluffy inside, covered in butter and cheese.

Baked potatoes remind me of winter nights in Canberra, my home town. When the sun goes down at five and it’s freezing outside and you’re wearing just about every layer you own because Dad has an arbitrary rule about not turning on the heating until after ANZAC day, even though the Canberra winter starts well before then.