Throwing out a soft ball, LongAndShortReviews asks this week about bloggers' favorite foods.
Anyone who thinks that will be good for some very short blog posts is not well acquainted with writers. Writers tend to be Highly Sensory-Perceptive and to like lots of different things in different ways, so when asked to name a favorite character or choose a favorite food we can easily end up writing books.
"Favorite Foods: Chapter One. Top Ten Breakfasts to Cook at Home; Top Ten Breakfasts on the Road; Top Ten Breakfasts at Restaurants; Top Ten Alternatives to Breakfast When One Has Slept Past Breakfast Time..."
It needs to be mentioned that just thinking about food can raise insulin levels. This makes it almost literally true that, for some people who are trying to lose weight, thinking about food or looking at food may not make them actually gain weight but it will delay any loss of that surplus fat they've been trying so hard to burn off. Those people should close this tab now and go and exercise instead.
Are some dieters still here? Let's give youall some tabs to open. Open these tabs, then close this tab, which is only about food, and start dancing. Marching. Whatever. These links to brisk, cheerful tunes were all suggested in Rick Bailey's new book, And Now This, which makes them part of a book blog...
Now, for those who don't need to lose surplus weight, or who are eating anyway, some memorable pleasures my palate has known...
1. A fresh sun-warmed strawberry, not too big, rich deep ruby red all over, just inside the line between ripe and overripe, found in the garden just before you water the plants. Pick the berry, rinse it off in the water you are directing toward the plant, pop it into the mouth, and savor..
2. Maple syrup poured off, not just before it starts to crystallize into sugar, but just when it stops tasting like water. You've only been boiling off thirty gallons of steam to get the first kettle to this point. Keep the syrup warm, though not necessarily boiling, while you whip up some hot waffles. (Gluten-free waffles are, if anything, more delectable than wheat-based waffles.)
3. A real vine-ripened tomato. Yellow Pink Centers, which my father used to claim as a favorite, are so sweet you might fail to recognize them as tomatoes if you're accustomed to the beefsteak kind. I like the tangier cultivars that are closer to that beefsteak flavor, myself, though I like Yellow Pink Center tomatoes too. Real vine-ripened tomatoes are too soft to be peeled. Wash them thoroughly, put them into bowls--they grow big enough that there's room for one in a typical bowl--cut the pulp into bite-sizd pieces, as best you can with the juices running out and the pulp melting in your fingers, sprinklewith salt, and eat with a spoon. Spoon out the seeds and spread them to dry on a napkin because you want to plant these tomatoes next year, not because swallowing the seeds does any harm.
4. It is also good hillbilly etiquette, when Real Cornbread comes out of the oven, to cut slabs of cornbread and crumble them into your fresh juicy tomato, to help soak up the juice. Real Cornbread never contains a grain of sugar, or of molasses or maple syrup or any other sweetener. It's a salty and sometimes tangy, savory contrast to molasses, or to a really good tomato. The contrast between Real Cornbread's firm, oily bottom crust, crisp yet melting top crust, and airy crumb adds something to the experience.
5. There is also nothing quite like, on a hot day, peeling and biting into a raw cucumber.
6. Though a related kind of gustatory bliss comes from arriving, after a long walk, at a spring in which rock lettuce grows. Rock lettuce combines the thirst-quenching juicy quality of iceberg lettuce with the body and nutrient value of leaf lettuce, which makes it by far the best kind of lettuce, if you limit yourself to eating it only when you walk to a spring where it grows. Like asparagus, its specialness decreases by the second after it's picked.\
7. A peak-ripe pineapple is a memorable taste treat, although not much can be said for a pineapple that is not peak-ripe. Pineapples that have ripened to a questionable or borderline stage sometimes reach the level of deliciousness nature intended after cooking.
8. Mangoes sold in supermarkets are usually less than they should be, too. They can often be ripened to perfection on a south-facing windowsill.
9. I don't often eat sugary things, but when I do I like S-U-G-A-R. The perfect form of sugar is achieved thusly: Melt a pound of brown sugar in at least half a stick of butter or margarine with a small tin of condensed milk. Cook until it's boiled up like the Yellowstone mud and a drop dripped into water forms a soft ball. Then take it off the heat and cool the pan in a snowbank until you can comfortably hold the outside of the pan in your hand. Then beat in a 7-ounce tub of marshmallow ceme, a spoonful of vanilla, and stir in as many pecans as possible. Pour into a shallow pan and cool until it firms up.
10. I'm not as enthusiastic about the flavor of fresh "green" sweet corn as some people are. I prefer it cooked rather than raw, and it needs no butter, sugar, or pepper at all and only a sprinkle of salt.
You are a gourmet! Or at least you favour all things natural, fresh and juicy.
ReplyDeleteI remember my mother telling us, her children, not to eat the tomato seeds, a plant may grow inside the body. I ate it anyway. And yes, raw cucumbers on a hot day is something anyone must try. :)
Thank you for the kind words. Yes, I love the natural, fresh, and juicy...
ReplyDeleteActually Cinde Little is the Gluten-Free Gourmet. She blogs at everydayglutenfreegourmet.ca.