Dare I use the word… cozy? (Cosy, if you’re British) It’s such an old fashioned word and the antithesis of the age we live in. Today’s culture exalts super-sized everything, violence ridden movies and video games, tattoos and piercings and the demise of courtesy.
Cozy, on the other hand, connotes all things warm, small, soothing and sheltering.
Cozy food, a.k.a. comfort food, oozes warmth. If I were to run “The Cozy Cafe”, tomato and pea soups, macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese, waffles, cocoa, tea, chocolate chip cookies and butterscotch sundaes would be mainstays of my menu.
The English have cornered the market in cozy housing. They invented the Cotswold Cottage: petite, quaint and ensconced with an English country garden. Requisite cats, the coziest of creatures, dwell inside.
We also can thank the British for “cozies”, a book genre. Despite the fact that a murder invariably occurs, lots of tea, English villages, vicars and flowers abound.
Cozy clothes are more of an American thing. Maybe it started with casual Fridays. Or maybe we never got over the frontier. Flannel shirts, well-worn jeans, fur lined moccasins and granny nightgowns come to mind.
If you’re envisioning me cocooned in sweats and living in a Mary Engelbreit decorated cottage, you would be wrong. But an occasional foray into the world of cozy can cheer up any bleak day.
What’s your cozy?
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With snow beating against the windows I in my flannel nightie and the dog at my side the cat on my shoulder and a book on my lap…not a kindle.
Ahh, cozy sounds great on a cold, rainy day like today. My idea of cozy is a good book, ginger tea, good music, a scented candle, and a comfortable chair. A fire going and my Oprah cozy angel pj’s would fit in nicely, too.
All of the above! But Mary I was searching for the word “tea cosy”–those silly quilted things they put on a pot of tea–they look ridiculous to me in a coffeeshop . . . I’d be too embarassed to use them in public!!!
How could I have forgotten the wine?????????
Cozy…..home cooked dinner with candlelight and wine…
Alan’s cozy would work as well….
Mara, we will be delighted to send you about three months of snow, absolutely free!
This makes me want to eat mac and cheese. For non-food cozy, I’d have to go for sitting on the couch in my bathrobe — plush, pink, and very unflattering — while resting my feet on my dog. Not all dogs will tolerate this, so I’m lucky to have one who will.
I love the word COZY. But I don’t relate to the cozy food concept, at least using those words. I relate to a cozy, soft, warm shirt, slippers, with a cup of tea or hot chocolate, and a nice lazy boy chair, a good book. I love my house, but having lots of glass makes it not cozy until we pull down the Window Quilts at dark and light a fire in the wood stove. Give a choice, I’d take a cozy cottage over a too large modern house, assuming that the cozy ambiance reflected actual warmth and not a house made of stone that actually was hard to heat.
Cozy would be winter time, my bed with my 5 big pillows, flannel sheets, on my comfy sweats, hot chocolate on the side and playing the “Bridget Jones” or “Holiday” movie…yeah, watching snow at least on TV is nice for me… we don’t have that here.
Loved your post about “cozy”… thanks!
Love from Tijuana, Mexico,
Mara
A wood fire, a bottle of red wine, something to read, and a COZY chair.