That might mean a food that feels soft in your mouth, like mashed potatoes, or creamy (ice cream), spicy (“chili makes you warm inside”) or crunchy (nuts, potato chips).

“It depends on the emotion at the time,” Sherri says. “If you’re feeling really stressed, chewing crunchy food may be a stress reliever. If you feel isolated, smooth and creamy might be comforting.”

Comfort foods might be old family recipes that evoke a pleasant memory of the past. In fact, I suspect that research on food and mood might find a direct link between the release of the serotonin in the brain from carbohydrate-rich hot dishes - the creamy, comforting one-dish meals made with noodles, rice, potatoes and “cream of something” soup - and “Northern Nice.”

For most people, it’s okay to eat “comfort foods,” even the high calorie and high fat stuff, if you don’t make it your every day meal.

“There’s no reason to eliminate comfort foods,” Sherri says. “On a diet you can’t have this, can’t have that and then it becomes more of an obsession (to get that food). It’s all about moderation.”

So quantity (don’t eat tons) and frequency (don’t eat it all the time) becomes the healthy key to indulging in comfort foods.

I’ve seen comfort food in action. I once worked with a photographer who was always terrifically nice and even tempered. My only clue to when Scott was upset was when he’d order a cheeseburger, fries and chocolate shake for lunch - just like his Dad used to buy for him at Bridgeman’s restaurant. In college, a dear girlfriend downed an entire chocolate cheesecake after breaking up with her boyfriend of two years.

When I don’t feel well, I’ll get up and make my own favorite “chicken soup,” with lots of veggies, homemade dumplings and allspice berries floating in a turkey broth.

But for cold, nasty, lingering winter there’s nothing like my Havarti Cheese Mashed Potatoes; they are a warm down comforter for the soul.

Havarti Cheese Mashed Potatoes is the dish that comes home from the potluck mysteriously licked clean. It’s the food taken to the sick friend who can’t get out of bed to cook. It is the siren singing seductively from the fridge after a long hard - and cold - day.

Ultimately, when it comes to comfort food, we just know it when we taste it. The other day I was sampling a cheesy “Top the Tater” potato hot dish. I complimented the cook who said, “It is perfect comfort food, isn’t it?” Yes, it was…

Juli Kellner hosts cooking programs on WDSE-PBS Eight in Duluth and is our food columnist. Next issue: a Northern Pike recipe.