Food Rave

You've heard Rants here. A Rant is a complaint, delivering negative feelings. A Rave is the opposite of a Rant: it's an enthusiastic declaration of positive appreciation. So here's a Rave, this one about the foods I love.

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I am holding a little slab of pure deliciousness. It is Orange, of course, but it is not a citrus orange. It is a dried apricot, known as a “slab” because during the drying process the fruit piece settles into a flat puddle of sticky sweetness. You have to forcibly remove the slabs from me or else I eat the whole package contents and get a wicked bellyache. Same with prunes and other items of dried delectability.

I’ve talked about foods I hate (any green vegetable), now I’ll talk about foods I love. Start with appetizers. The “appetizer” word just makes me feel good thinking about it. It is not an “app” that you load on your smartphone, despite how hipster menu-makers describe it. It is a collection of nodules of happy flavor that you and your friends devour first. Whenever I hear the word “jalapeño” in any food description, I know I’m in the right place. The time-honored thing to say when you get a plate of appetizers, especially nacho jalapeño appetizers is, “It’s a whole meal on its own!” Which of course is more than true, but you’ve already eaten it and are going on to the main course. Take a swig of your micro craft draft brew and continue.

Meat! Let’s meat up! There is no food more satisfying for me than meat. I am a confirmed carnivore. I tried being a vegetarian for 6 weeks one year and by the fourth week I was ready to slaughter the next Whole Foods customer I saw. I will never do that again (not slaughtering the customer, that is purely theoretical my friends!). You can prepare meat however you want it, and I will slink up to it on silent paws, waiting for my share. But it’s not just meat that occupies my plate ‘o’ plenty. I will eat potatoes done any old way, even though I hear that a potato comes from a plant. The secret is….cheese. 

Cheese! Wonderful fermented curdled crumbly slimy moldy essence of the primal whiteness of dairy! I will eat any food over which cheese has been applied, even tofu. Bleu cheese looks like zombie remains, smells like a swamp, and I adore it. Brie is covered by white fungus: More please. See how the Cheese melts its way through everything I love to eat! I am never without it, except while traveling, when I cannot keep it cool on the road. 

We are therefore building to a display of gourmand logic, built upon not those dreary food pyramid groups but on the feastable moment of my favorite treat foods. What has cheese, meat, starch, fried stuff, and peppers all at once, in one magnificent oozing cylinder? The CHEESESTEAK of course. Let me meditate upon this a while. It is a serious matter.

I simply won’t mention dessert. That is for another posting, another time.


I am holding a large container in my hands. It is my Offering to the Gods of Snack. (Or Slack, if you prefer.) It contains mixed dried fruit, almonds and cashews, and a few bits of milk chocolate. It is something I can always eat, as long as I don’t eat too much of it. (See above.) It looks like an old-time lottery or Bingo container from which tokens were picked. I hold the cover down and shake the container vigorously. Then I place it on the Kitchen Table and reach within. Behold, I have won the lottery. I have selected a PRUNE!