Challenge: My Favorite Food

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews.)

Prompt: My favorite food

Oh, easy! It's definitely cheeseburgers. Unless it's omelettes. Or, um, Pad kee Mao? French fries? Loaded french fries? Stir fry? No, wait, maybe it's the Mozzarella sticks from that one place that rolls them in panko crumbs? No, it's definitely bulgogi. Or gyro meat with that rice and some tzatziki sauce, maybe a bit of kafta on the side.

Uh oh. 

I like to eat, y'all. I like a lot of different kinds of food. I like having a variety of different kinds of food.

But I guess, after careful consideration of how my grocery budget actually gets spent, there is a final winner. 

It's bacon.

All. The. Bacon.

Bacon by itself. Bacon crumbled onto cheesy fries. Bacon in cheeseburgers. Bacon in omelettes. Bacon mixed into macaroni and cheese. Bacon cooked as part of a stir fry. It's just such a wonderfully versatile food, and so, so yummy.

Bacon.

Challenge: One Meal

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews.)

Prompt: One meal everyone should try

I can't think of any dishes that I'm hip enough to know about and other people might be missing out on, so I'm just going to plug Beautiful Wife's spinach bread, which is simple and delicious and amazingly filling (and also vegetarian). Basically, you cook up some spinach; then you take a loaf of french bread and scoop out the center. (Dinner rolls work too, if they're reasonably big.) Then you fill the bread with a mixture of spinach, cheese, garlic, and olive oil, and you wrap it in tin foil and bake it. 

And then you eat it. 

And then you eat more of it, because it was so good. 

Seriously, y'all. For a very simple recipe, this is great stuff.

Choose Your Own Adventure Cookbook

Inspired by something I saw on facebook...

"If you do not have enough olive oil, turn to page 122. Um, okay. Page 122... 'Order Pizza.'"

"WHAT?"

"That's what it says. We're out of Olive Oil, so I turned to page 122, and it's telling me to order pizza."

"Are there any other options?"

"Hang on, I marked our place with my finger... Okay. 'If you think you can run to the store to get more olive oil before your guests arrive, turn to page 76.'"

"And?"

"Hang on. Page 76... 'You will not have time to finish the sauce before the chicken is overcooked to the point of petrification. Turn to page 122."

"And what's on page 122?"

"It still says, 'Order pizza.'"

"What if I substitute melted butter for the olive oil?"

"Well, let me flip back... Here it is. 'If you wish to substitute butter for olive oil under the wildly misguided belief that this won't thoroughly destroy the flavor of your sauce, turn to page 130."

"Fine. Page 130?"

"...Says, 'May all the saints and angels protect you. You're on your own from here. Godspeed.' Then, in parentheses, it adds: 'It's still not too late to turn to page 122.' Which is the pizza page. I... may be detecting a theme, here."

Secondborn's First Recipe

Secondborn will be six years old in April. We've been watching the Great British Baking Show. This has had... consequences.

As of this evening, he has presented his first recipe. After dinner, for dessert, he made his own sandwiches.

To create them he took a pair (or in grand experiment, a trio) of Premium saltine crackers. Between them, he spread a scattering of Fruit Loops. Then, to hold everything in place, he added a great whopping dollop of whipped cream, and squished everything together.

Then, of course, he ate them. Apparently they were delicious.

It was a Good Bake.

United Way Chili Cookoff II: Salvation

The time has come again. The invitations have been issued, and the challengers have gathered. Each will have a unique opportunity to demonstrate courage, skill, and endurance in the most grueling type of competition ever devised by man: the Chili Cookoff.

Where I work, this happens once a year. It's part of our annual fundraising for the United Way. For the past couple of years, I've been recruited to be one of the Chili Cooks.

You'd think they'd have learned their lesson by now, but apparently not. My wife, however, has. So, this year, in the interest of saving lives and preserving sanity, she offered (in that particular use of the word "offer" that you most often see in the context of, say, Mob enforcers or tax collectors) to cook the chili for me.

I did not refuse. Mainly because, well, it wasn't that sort of offer.

So this year I will bring a crock pot full of safe, filling, wholesome - but still very garlicky - chili to the cookoff. The victims participants may consider this my wife's apology for the nightmarish catastrophes that I have inflicted on them in previous years.

I still don't hold with using these newfangled "recipes" when you're cooking, though.

United Way Chili Cookoff of DOOM!

I made chili yesterday.

Now, I understand that for most people, making chili is not an especially momentous event. And it really shouldn't be, even for me. I mean, I know how to cook - and not just bachelor food, either. Chili, however, intimidates me.

Partly that's because I don't really like chili. I'll eat it, but it's not something I ever find myself in the mood for. So I don't have any idea what people want or expect when they decide to eat chili.

As corollary of that, I don't cook chili. Yesterday marks the second time in my entire life that I have made the attempt. The first time was almost exactly a year ago, and for the same occasion: we're having a fundraiser at work for the United Way. One of the events is the chili cookoff. You'd think it would be easy to find people who actually know how to cook chili, but apparently not.

I just hope that nobody comes to harm. I mean, the ingredients are all edible... individually. It's the cumulative effect that worries me. For one thing, the recipe* includes a lot of garlic; anybody eating this chili is guaranteed to be proof against vampires for at least four hours. Possibly proof against their co-workers, as well. For another thing, there's a little bit... okay, a lot... of tabasco in the mix. The tabasco bottle was labelled "Instant Death", but that did not deter me. I may not know much about chili, but my food will not be bland!

Chili, for me, doesn't really count as cooking. It's more of an adventure - the sort of experiment that would make even Dr. Frankenstein pull back and say, "You know, maybe we should reconsider this." Pity the poor souls who must sample my work.

* Not really a recipe. It's more a conceptual recipe than an actual, reproducible formula.