A FEW FOOD OBSERVATIONS

You know, people spend their Thanksgivings many different ways. Perhaps it's watching the Dallas Cowboys. Or planning their Black Friday purchases. Or maybe, like me, it's giving thanks for all the great things in the world and then shoving miraculous helpings of food into my belly.

I'm thankful for a lot of things. My lovely wife, my awesome family, my new nephew (whaddup, homie), my health, powdered sugar, baseball. I've got a great life. But that's not the purpose of this post. That's the purpose of what I'll do all day tomorrow. For now, I'll talk about some observations I've made over the last couple of days.

I've come to some revelations or rather eye-opening observations about food. I don't know what sparked it. Maybe long walks to work did it. Maybe it was turning in carbonated drinks for healthier substitutes (although I really question if two bottles of wine a night is much healthier). Maybe it was the weight loss that I experienced over the last year and a half or however long it's been. I know one of these observations came to me about twenty minutes ago when I couldn't sleep. Odd how the mind works at those long, sleepless hours of the night.

Firstly, I really like lemonade. I mean, I didn't know this until I had to find alternatives for cola, but lemonade is probably one of the greatest drinks known to man. I have started developing my favorites (of which I'll probably go through in a different post), but really I can get with almost any brand whether out of a bottle, jug or fountain machine. I like it mixed from a powder or fresh with extra pulp. Lemonade's fantastic. I probably consumed more lemonade in the last two weeks than I ever have in my thirty years in this world. I think a dietician might suggest that level of consumption is not quite healthy, but I can't help it. I love it that much.

Secondly, I don't know the difference between marinara, spaghetti sauce and ketchup sometimes. Furthermore, I don't know the difference between good and bad marinara. I mean, if you put tomato paste down in front of me and sprinkled some oregano on it and called it dinner, I'd eat it all the same. I'm not sure if I went to a really great Italian restaurant and someone said, "Our sauce is the best this side of the Mississippi," that I wouldn't say, "Well, so long as it's red and made with tomatoes." It's not that I don't like it, I just don't know the difference. And, I'm not sure if people talk about marinara in terms of "best this side of the Mississippi." You can put white wine, garlic, oregano, spit, onion, lemon zest, fennel in it and it's gonna go down the same way--topped in parmasean, a dash of pepper and sprinkling of salt.

Lastly, I've found in my years that I don't like bread as much as I like butter. I mean, I like bread for its traditional purposes in sandwiches and hot dogs, but if you had me a piece of warm bread and say, "Enjoy some bread," I will not until I have a tub of butter. Maybe that means I don't really enjoy bread. It's probably some sort of notion like, "Oh, you cheapen the experience with your butter, you silly American," but I can't do it. In fact, safe to say that I only eat bread because it gives me license to consume more butter than is allowed on grounds of decency and lawfulness. Sometimes at a meal, I'll see some butter and I'll think to myself, "I really need some bread so I can eat that butter right there." The bread becomes only a vehicle for the butter to me. Just know that if I'm over for dinner and you offer me bread, it better come with butter. Otherwise, I'll openly admit that I have no appreciation for food and would rather see everything drenched in butter or A1 Sauce. There, I cracked.

Everyone have a great Thanksgiving. Working on my year-end list, yep, don't worry. Texas Tech knocked off #6 in the nation in Lubbock. Sooners should know better coming into Lubbock as a top-10 team. Had a killer weekend in Taos with the lovely wife. Ate chorizo and couldn't find an alpaca hat. Man, talk about non-discriminate dining...chorizo? Damn, I'll eat anything.