Comfort Food For The Brave New Year: Recipe Included

Issue 2871— January 5, 2026

My sister used to send the same holiday message every year. The ditty went like this:

Happy Hanukkah knishes.

Merry Christmas wishes.

Lots of Kwanzaa cheer.

And a Brave New Year.

The new year of 2026 has already started out requiring much bravery. And bravery is best in community.

Times like these call for comfort food. Food that conjures safety, security, family, warmth, culture.

I’m curious what your comfort foods are. Drop a comment and let’s compare notes. Feel free to share recipe too.

When it’s cold outside, my yearning goes to spicy, rib-sticking chilis. They fulfill all the characteristics of comfort foods for me: warmth, hearty-ness, emotional and nostalgic connection with family and the various cultures of my life and places I’ve lived.

Red chili conjures the huge vats of it the Latina moms of my Head Start class in Odessa Texas made for fundraising dinners. Creating delicious pots of Texas red together enabled me to share in the beauty of Mexican-American culture along with the joys of women confiding in each other while chopping and stirring.

I’ve never deviated from their classic recipe. I have often made it for office holiday parties and even once when I needed to bring together two adversarial groups to resolve their differences. It worked.

Green chili takes me back to a trip to Albuquerque with my sister Candy, when she was in graduate school during her hippy single days. I was the un-hippy married mother of three young children. We went to visit her friend in graduate school at the University of New Mexico.

They introduced me to the Women’s Center –- then a new phenomenon borne of second wave feminism.

There, I picked up a copy of the small pamphlet that would become the iconic “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”

The first version was published in newsprint in 1970. It would soon become a large book and a revolutionary beacon of women’s health information we’d never had but always wanted. More importantly it was written from the lens and lived experiences of women themselves at a time medicine was entirely dominated by men.

A soup pot of aromatic green chile stew was bubbling on Candy’s friend’s stove. I learned that New Mexico is the home of the coveted green chiles that form the basis for much of the area’s indigenous food.

So green chile stew became for me an olfactory and savory symbol of the revolution taking place as women were pressing for equality. We were awakening to the injustices that kept women, in the vernacular of the day, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

About that time, I decided to devote my career to curing the injustices and creating the circumstances in which women could, in law and in the reality of daily life, own their bodies, build the families and careers of their choice, and earn accordingly.

I will be the first to say women have made so much progress. I will be the last to say we have achieved all our goals.

That’s why I cofounded Take The Lead® over a decade ago to provide the training, coaching, role models, thought leadership, and community in a program proven to accelerate women’s journey to take their fair and equal share of leadership roles in every sector.

Now, when over 500,000 women have been pushed out of the workforce due to government cuts that ripple outward, when organization cultures still don’t make provisions for caregiving yet many cut programs that advance women’s leadership, this work and your involvement are more important than ever.

So I thank you for your support and wish us all a Brave New Year, replete with comfort food! We’re going to need sustenance that’s chile hot to meet the challenges ahead.

Here’s your promised recipe. Enjoy.

Green Chile Stew (for 6-8)

 ·         Brown: 5 lbs. beef or pork small cubes (easy to do on a cookie sheet on broil in the oven, or in the large pot you’ll cook the stew in).

·         Saute in olive oil: 9 chopped cloves garlic and 2 large chopped onions. Add to meat.

·         Add and mix well: 1 Tbsp each oregano, powdered onion, parsley flakes and 2 Tbsp each garlic salt, cumin, and flour. Add salt and pepper to taste.

·         Add and simmer about 2-3 hours or until the meat is very tender: 6-8 cups chicken or beef broth and 2 Mexican beers (optional)

·         Add: 1 lb thawed chopped roasted, peeled, and seeded Hatch green chiles. I order the chiles roasted, chopped, and frozen from Hatch. Big Jim medium hot. You can roast, peel, and chop your own during harvest season, best to do on an outdoor grill. It creates an amazing aroma. But that is way too much trouble for me! 

·         When the meat is done, you can add 4 large diced golden potatoes or a can of hominy drained if you want. We like potatoes, and about 2 cups of frozen corn for color and texture. Cook till potatoes are tender.

·         Thicken with a roux made with 4 Tbsp of flour and 4 Tbsp of butter. (You might not need this especially if you’ve added potatoes and corn. It depends on how thick or soupy you like it.) Correct salt and pepper if needed.

·         Serve with toppings such as shredded lettuce, chopped tomato, salsa, avocado, shredded cheese, and with tortillas or cornbread.  

This freezes perfectly. The batch can be doubled for a large group or to stock the freezer with dinner sized portions, great for cold nights when you don’t have time to cook.

That’s it! Guaranteed to stoke you up and keep you warm for the Brave New Year!

 GLORIA FELDT is the Co-founder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker, and a global expert in women’s leadership development and DEI for individuals and companies that want to build gender balance. She is a bestselling author of five books, most recently Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. Honored as Forbes 50 Over 50, and Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Find her @GloriaFeldt on all social media.