Update: Ed’s is inching closer.  22% to 25% with a month to go. 

First, I love food (who doesn’t), so this is actually quite hard to answer.  Growing up, I loved a meal my mother would make quite often — chicken cutlets, mashed potatos, and corn.  This was a comfort meal for me, and still is to this day.  It certainly helps me recall many fond memories growing up.  Especially the many times of running in from playing outside to eat dinner, shove dinner down my throat only to then run back outside again to play. 

To be honest, chicken cutlets, today, don’t satisfy me quite like they did when I was little.  Perhaps I just ate them too much growing up.  I still do enjoy the occasional chicken cutlet, but I don’t have them nearly as often as compared to when I was little.  I do, however, enjoy making them for when I usually make my chicken parm meals.  I’m still working on figuring out how to get them extra crispy. 

Mashed potatoes are still an all-time favorite.  I still crave them, and still look forward to having them.  Growing up, my mother made them very creamy (they’re quite good this way), so I was always used to having them this way.  When I met fiance, and began eating at her house, her mother would make them less creamy — so it certainly was a change for me.  And as such, I’ve learned to really enjoy the less-creamy mashed potatoes.  With these, you can just pile on the brown gravy to make the ultimate side-dish of mashed potatoes.  With my mother’s, if you put gravy on them, they just become a very liquid mess.  So, I do appreciate, these days, having both kinds of mashed potatoes. 

Also on the potato front, recently I’ve learn to love baked sweet potatoes.  Mmm, throw in some butter, cinnamon, and sugar, and I’m golden.  I long for this side dish whenever I go to an Outback or Longhorn. 

What else?  I’m a big fan of penne a la vodka.  I’ve never made this, but I’ve been wanting to for quite some time now.  The jar vodka sauce is alright, nothing special.  But when it’s made fresh at a restaurant, it’s incredible.  The creaminess and the smoothness of the sauce just fulfills your stomach’s every want (fuck, I sound like a cooking show now). 

I’ve grown to love spinach, though I rarely ever have it.  But when I do, I absolutely love it.  My mother loves cooking it with olive oil and garlic, but I prefer just having it boiled with a touch of butter and salt.  My grandmother makes an excellent spinach bread, and it’s another comfort food from growing up. 

Steak, specifically prime rib, is another most enjoyable food for me.  It seems that the more I age, the less I like my steak cooked.  Growing up, it was always well done.  These days, I like it medium-rare — the more red, the better.  I’ve also acquired a taste for the fat on steak.  While I still get grossed out by it, having a little bit of fat within the meat is absolutely the best possible thing in the world.  The fat gives off so much great extra flavoring (even if it feels really weird on your tongue). 

And to close, I love a good sandwich. 

I don’t know if these things really are all that great, or if I’m just being fat (my money is on I’m just being fat), but these things really are Jesus in pretzel form.

And no, these don’t leave you with Jesus-breath.  You know, Jesus-breath — that taste left in your mouth after you finished the Eucharist.  Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.

I’m surely going to hell.