List Mania!

Coming in under the wire! It’s the Thursday list!

Kind of a cop out this week, couldn’t think of anything terribly innovative especially considering it didn’t dawn on me until 5:00 PM that it was Thursday and I promised a list on Thursdays. So, without further ado we present:

13. Eggs over Easy – Someone told me these are called “dippy eggs.” Sorry, that’s just retarded. There’s nothing like dipping a bit of toast in baby bird for breakfasty goodness.

12. Italian Wedding Soup – Chickeny and beefy with some sort of bizarre microscopic dumplings. And is that spinach? Yum.

11. Lasagna – Used to be my numero uno I think but I don’t get it very often anymore so things I eat more often shoot to the top of the list. And it’s just sacrilege to make it with ricotta, cottage cheese is the best.

10. Crabcakes – I had so much crab this summer I thought I might start walking around like they used to make you do in gym class. Hard shells are too much effort, soft shells scare the hell out of me, but get someone else to do all the work and I’m a happy man.

9. Scrapple – Must be the south-eastern Pennsylvanian part of me. I could live on Scrapple. If only we could get some decent rolls around here. I live in a goddamned cultural desert, I swear.

8. Chicken Salad – I’ve had the oddest lust for chicken salad for many many months now. I rarely get it but always have a taste for it. It’s damn near impossible to get correctly made. The chicken has to be ground so it’s a paste rather than chunky and I wish I knew what the proper spice was. Best chicken salad ever? The stuff I bought in a little tub just north of Wytheville, VA on the great 2003 journey south.

7. Gyro! – The exclamation point is obligatory based on an old story about an Atlantic City gyro vendor. The cucumber sauce always makes me feel like shite but it’s always worth it.

6. Cheese Steaks – There’s that south-eastern Pennsylvanian sneaking in again. For the longest time I thought it the depraved heights of lunacy to put anything but cheese, steak and maybe some caramelized onions on a roll. Now, however, I’ve become enamoured of the sublime combination of LTM in addition to the aforementioned.

5. Biscuits and Sausage Gravy – The midwesterner in me? The ancestral southerner? I make the best damn biscuits and gravy in the world, even if I can’t find a decent recipie for the good mealy biscuits you can get down south and have to settle for Pillsbury. Biscuits and Gravy are the legendary “drunken weekend at Rader’s house” food.

4. Corned Beef & Cabbage – Started as a substitute for proper irish bacon and has become the Irish-American food of choice. And I love the cabbage.

3. Shepherd’s Pie – Another dish I rarely get well-made. A trip to the Market Cross pub is in order (is it still around?). Beef, gravy and potatoes. The ultimate man’s food and all the things to make this bastard son of the British Isles happy.

2. Fettucini Alfredo – In all the trips to the Olive Garden during the last couple of years of college I doubt I ever ordered anything else. When I started going regularly to the Red Lobster near work the waitresses would know what I wanted as soon as I walked in the door. Fettucini Alfredo with the little shrimps.

1. Steamed Clams – Can’t write, drooling all over keyboard.

Dammit, now I’m hungry! Good thing it’s supper time!