i like dirty rice! usually it's chopped peppers, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and ground beef with rice and seasonings. but it doesn't require precise quantities of specific ingredients. you can make it vegetarian/vegan friendly if you have some plant based protein. and it doesn't take too long to cook.

Personally speaking, carb heaviness is my go to criterion for comfort foodiness and I like to get some vegetables in too at the same go to make a meal feel more substantial. First loading up some carbs as dinner followed by going for a walk - whether long or short - kinda rules as a lifestyle choice. Carbs really seem to help me mellow down and if this counts as emotional eating, it seems still to hold up quite well sustainability wise.

As a concrete recipe, I like spaghetti with classic tomato sauce, especially with butter beans (aka large lima beans), but small variations keep it fresh. I do not respect any notion of authenticity, so take "classic" with a grain of salt. Olive oil, onions, garlic, crushed and pureed tomatoes, wine, vegetable stock (powder is most convenient), herbs and pepper is the basic ingredient list.

The recipe itself:

1. sautèe onions in olive oil on medium high heat until translucent (with other aromatic vegetables like bell peppers or carrots if you wish)
2. add tomato paste and stir it to mix it.
3. Add crushed or minced garlic and continue sautèing them for 30 seconds after which you swiftly mix in a can of crushed tomatoes. (Pro-tip: open the can before mixing garlic in!)
4. Then add the all the other ingredients save for the herbs and let it simmer on low heat. How long? I do it by ear, so I don't know really. The sauce will look quite different by the time it has cooked long enough and has become thickened by onions that soften and melt into the sauciness. 10 to 15 minutes until I start boiling pasta, I guess.
5. Pasta boiling is a fine moment to dump dried herbs in too. Fresh ones can go in when you mix pasta and sauce together.
6. Top the serving on your plate with grated cheese. Parmesan is supposedly delicious and my experience confirms it, but cheese is to a degree cheese here.

Vartations:

1. Keeping it simple at first and exploring variations one at a time, savoring and appreciating things on their own terms is probably why this has been a staple for so long.
2. Lima beans are my personal favorite thing to add on this, after adding crushed tomatoes. It's what I like to serve guests. But minced meat, many other beans and tuna work well. These are indeed some of my favorite proteins here.
3. Olives, hot peppers, eggplants, some mushroom as well. Chanterelles like the aciditiy of tomatoes. Take care with carrots: they are indeed sweet enough to potentially make the whole dish too damn sweet.
4. A little Worcestershire sauce and a tea spoon of sugar are interesting options as well to bring out some umami flavors. Speaking of umami, there's real unexplored territory imho when it comes to classic tomato sauce. Fish sauce could be marvelous!

either mac and cheese, or chicken katsu

Cheese grits is good, reminds me of a snack I used to make. Just a big packet of oil tuna fish mixed into hot grits.

I'm a fan of lentils with various combos of rice and spices. Garlic and salt. Boil lentils down to a refried bean consistency (covered and boiled hard for 30 minutes), slow cooked for another 30.