Foods Have I Loved

We all have certain meals we love love love, so I thought I'd list a few favorites (in no order).

1) LASAGNA - and by this I mean "Greg Lasagna": 2 lbs cheese, 5 lbs of ground beef/sausage, and a jar of Ragu. Don't gimme no damn ricotta or spinach crap, and don't turn your nose up at Ragu. I've tried many many many homemade sauces that people slave over. They're all very good, and I admire their efforts, but I have yet to desire anything more than Ragu. And now they got a million varieties anyway; I like the Italian Sausage & Cheese jar. This is funny, since I mix it with enough Italian sausage/cheese to give you instant gout. My new trick is to use some of the grease from the meat after browning it - hey, we're making Greg Lasagna here. It adds incredible flavor - you may drop dead at the end, but what a way to go. My favorite memory of this is a few years back I was house-sitting for Will & Gina and my buddy Op came over and I made this; I had so much meat stuffed in the fucker that to get the 3rd layer on top I had to practically sit on it like you would an overstuffed suitcase. Man. Can still taste. Accompany with bread, a gallon of milk and a 14-hour nap.

2) FRIED CHICKEN - everyone knows how much I blather about this anyways. Buttermilk soaked extra crispy deep-fried bird. To be honest, I think I like making fried chicken even more than actually eating it. I'm usually so emotionally drained afterwards anyways, sometimes I just like to look at it. I would like to be more daring with my breading; for instance, I'm fascinated by recipes using crushed potato chips for breading. I've never seen/eaten/actually known anyone who has done this, but the next time I'm looking for my heart to seize I'm definitely trying this. Lottsa things go great with fried chicken; I really like (of course) macaroni & cheese (note: I hate it when people chirp out 'mac n cheese'. "mac". ugh.) Lately I've been into Stove Top stuffing too: it's quick, easy, and an excuse to use another tub of butter. If you're ambitious try making biscuits, but they're tough to make. Add a gallon of milk, a coupla friends who will egg you on to deep fry everything in the house and you're off!

3) SUNDAY DINNER - boy, I miss a big Sunday dinner. Every Sunday growin up we'd have Sunday Dinner after mass, and the menu rarely changed: roast chicken, mashed potatoes, peas, Stove Top, bread, gallon of milk, and then homemade apple pie. Tuff to beat. Sometimes we'd mix it up with roast beef instead of chicken, and sometimes instead of pie we'd have chocolate pudding (my brother Edmund would always make the pudding; 20 years later I'm still trying to hang the nickname "Puddin Boy" on him. Stay tuned to see if it sticks). This meal always seemed to last for hours; after we scarfed up everything in sight my dad would regale us with stories from when he was in the Marines. I can't remember any of the actual stories, and I'm sure they were repeated ad nauseum but I reckon I'll listen to anything if you've just stuffed me full with a meal like that. I also remember that anytime I'd try to nab some food off my sister's plate, it was ice cold. Weird. My sister could take food off the hot stove, and 10 seconds later it'd be frozen. So either laws of heat and energy simply did not work in her presence, or she's the devil. Either one. A FEW NOTES ON MASHED POTATOES: Number 1 - don't try and be a fucking hero with the mashed potatoes. Let me lay it out for you: potatoes, milk, butter, salt n pepper. That’s it. Don't put in any fucking sour cream, don't put rosemary/parsley in it etc. I don't wanna look down at my mashed potatoes and see green. I don’t know what sliced almonds are for, but they are NOT for potatoes. You wanna show off fine, but leave the mashed potatoes alone. Number 2 - the last couple of years I've noticed more and more people cooing "ooooh, I want lumps in my mashed potatoes!" Christ. "more lumps"; I somehow get the vibe that these idiots somehow thinks that this makes them more rustic, more down-homey, more "real." Maybe it's because I've heard/overheard this from a million hipsters since I've come to Williamsburg. An accoutrement perhaps to the wearing-dirty-looking-clothes-that-cost-$600-and-John-Deere-trucker hats look, I suppose. And it seems to me like the richer they are, the more they gotta make sure you heard them, that they gotta have their precious fucking lumps. Rich man's guilt. 'Daddy bought me another car, I'd better not get creamy mashed potatoes.' Shut up. They're fucking potatoes, I like em lumpy, smooth, creamy, whatever. You popping a hammy jumping up to proclaim your love of lumps in your potatoes does not make you a hero to the working class. A final word on this: if one more person calls them "smashed potatoes" Im punching them in the fucking gullet (Rachel Ray, I'm looking at you).

4) MEAT LOAF - the perfect meal for a freezing cold night. Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, gravy. Freezing cold jug of milk. Man.

5) PB SAMMY - this is my Saturday afternoon in front of the tube joint. Jewish rye bread, Doritoes, and milk. Let the sandwich sit in your mouth, pour in some milk, there ya go. Sometimes I put the Doritos (nacho cheese!!!) IN the sandwich. Why I'm so alone is a mystery.

6) TACO NIGHT - I think I like tacos so much because to me, they're like a mini buffet. Spread out in front of you you got the meat, the cheese, the beans. Well, lettuce & tomato if there's a chick there and you wanna impress. Stuff the taco with so much meat that there's no way possible the taco can even pretend to hold together. Actually, scratch that, use lettuce & tomato - more filler for everyone else to use, leaving more meat/cheese for yourself! Makes me think of my high school girlfriend - we'd go to Pizza Hut, where we'd order breadsticks for an appetizer. I'd be Mr. Cool Guy and insist on letting her eat all the sticks she wanted (this was before PH came out with the good ones; back then they were like fucking pretzel sticks. ugh.) By the time the pizza comes, she's stuffed! All the pie I could eat, sitting there for me. Course the joke's on me -I gained 100 pounds, sleep with a teddy bear who's a right-wing fanatic while she's happily married. Ah well. Speaking of Pizza Hut, who's the fucking wizard that came up with that fucking dessert pizza I'd always see at the buffet? You gotta be kidding me. Every time I'd go up for seconds/thirds/nineteenths/ I'd hafta wait for the real pizzas to come out while this fucking thing sat there. There's no way they didn't just trot out the same one every week, too. "oooooh, pizza....hmmm...I'm thinking jam with cinnamon icing! yum!" fuck you. Is this really what the Chinese were thinkning of when they invented pizza? camon.

These are a few of my A++ meals. I'm sure I'll think of others - I'll keep you posted!