It’s been a while since I found a good meme, so naturally when I spotted one over at Byzantium’s Shores, I had to gank it for myself. It’s a fairly unique one, too, with no odd-ball questions about my underwear or most embarrassing childhood secret or whatever. Nope, this one is all about my epicurean habits. That is, it’s about what I like to eat…

Read on, loyal readers, and find out all kinds of useless trivia about my narcissistic self!

1. How do you like your eggs? Fried, generally, over-medium so the whites are done but I still have some yolk for toast-sopping. I also like Denver omelets, and scrambled eggs with diced bacon cooked inside, and one I learned from my mother, boiled, chopped, and slathered with butter, salt, and pepper. But most Sunday mornings, I get the fried variety.
2. How do you take your coffee/tea? Coffee: depends on the quality of the cup. If it’s a decent-tasting coffee — strong, but not too bitter or acidy — black is fine, but sometimes you just gotta add cream and/or sugar. Tea: earl grey, hot, with just a bit of honey. I like the brandy-flavored creamed kind made by the monks in Huntsville. (The Girlfriend and I usually make a single pilgrimage a year to drive up there — it’s about an hour from the Bennion Compound — and buy a couple cups. Then we go for a burger on the other side of town at the Shooting Star Saloon.)
3. Favorite breakfast food? Pretty much love ’em all (although I prefer good old-fashioned small-squared waffles to the currently ubiquitous Belgian variety), but a good plate of corned beef and hash with a couple of those fried eggs I mentioned is a precious thing. With a nice ripe grapefruit on the side to cleanse the palate.
4. Peanut butter – smooth or crunchy? Smooth, because crunchy is too much effort.
5. What kind of dressing on your salad? Ranch. Because it’s tough to mess that up.
6. Coke or Pepsi? I’ll drink pretty much anything that’s brown and fizzy, but preference is Coke. Although it’s been years since I’ve had a real one (damned corn syrup). One of these days, I’m going to have to try and find some of that Passover Coke that Jaquandor keeps talking about, the stuff that’s made with actual sugar.
7. You’re feeling lazy, what do you make? A Lynn Wilson microwave burrito. (I don’t know if the Lynn Wilson brand exists outside of Utah; it’s a line of frozen, ready-to-cook, er, heat, quasi-Mexican foods.) Beef and potato with some shredded cheddar is nice.
8. You’re feeling really lazy. What kind of pizza do you order? A Stromboli (pepperoni, onions, green peppers, and Italian sausage) from The Pie, which I can do now since there’s a location just up the road from the Bennion Compound and it delivers. (I used to have to drive all the way to uptown to the original Pie near the University of Utah.) I won’t dine in at the South Jordan location, though; it’s too irritating, nothing more than an ersatz strip-mall impression of the original University Pie, packed with squalling rugrats and their dead-eyed suburbanized parents who are trying to recapture a little of the cool they felt when they were 19 and writing their names on the walls — the actual brick walls instead of the faux plastic-brick facade — of Salt Lake’s coolest college hang-out. No, if I want to actually go to a pizza joint, then I’ll choose Nevole’s in Sandy.
9. You feel like cooking. What do you make? I don’t cook much, and I don’t have much of a repertoire because of it. I’m pretty good with breakfast foods — I can do a mean omelet, and I’m a whiz with French toast (the secret is to undercook it a hair, so the bread stays nice and moist). I’m still trying to duplicate the spaghetti-with-browned-butter-and-mizithra-cheese dish from The Old Spaghetti Factory. My only other notable attempt a producing a meal resulted in something The Girlfriend and I simply refer to as “the garlic loaf.” You see, I didn’t know the difference between a clove of garlic and a bulb, and the finished dish turned out a little… strong. I thought it was perfectly edible, myself, but no one would come near either of us for about a week afterward…
10. Do any foods bring back good memories? I’m sorry to admit this, given how utterly lacking in nutritional value they are, but Zingers, Ding Dongs, and Fanta Red Cream soda all bring back the perfect summertime days of my early childhood, when my dad was cutting hay for local farmers to make some extra cash, and Mom and I would bring him a midday snack in her ’56 Ford pick-up.
11. Do any foods bring back bad memories? Whenever I see a box of Froot-Loops, I think of the day I threw up in front of my entire second-grade class. I’d had Froot-Loops for breakfast, you see, and the colors… never mind. It was bad.
12. Do any foods remind you of someone? Zingers, Ding Dongs, and Fanta Red Cream, obviously. Also, potato salad reminds me of my mom, because she makes the best there is. And tortellini belongs to Cranky Robert, because of a memorable night when he cooked dinner for the two of us in New York City, made of all fresh ingredients we’d spent the afternoon shopping for in the sorts of tiny specialty markets we just don’t have here in Salt Lake.
13. Is there a food you refuse to eat? Red beets.
14. What was your favorite food as a child? I don’t know… cheeseburgers?
15. Is there a food that you hated as a child but now like? I can’t think of anything…
16. Is there a food that you liked as a child but now hate? Kraft mac-and-cheese. Ate way too much of the cheap shit during a few lean years when my dad was out of work, and I don’t care to ever eat it again.
17. Favorite fruit and vegetable: Fresh peaches in early September; green peas.
18. Favorite junk food: God, what kind of junk food don’t I like? Potato chips, nachos, chocolate chip cookies, tapioca pudding, chocolate cake, Red Vines licorice, and Idaho Spud candy bars all just zipped through my frontal lobe.
19. Favorite between meal snack: Potato chips, nachos, chocolate chip cookies, tapioca pudding, chocolate cake, Red Vines licorice, and Idaho Spud candy bars. Duh…
20. Do you have any weird food habits? Define “weird.”
21. You’re on a diet. What food(s) do you fill up on? Celery, almonds.
22. You’re off your diet. Now what would you like? Potato chips, nachos, chocolate chip cookies, tapioca pudding, chocolate cake, Red Vines licorice, and Idaho Spud candy bars. Double duh!
23. How spicy do you order Indian/Thai? I’ve not had Thai food that I can remember, and my experience with Indian is somewhat limited. In general, though, I’m something of a wuss with spicy. I don’t mind a little bit of heat, if it’s combined with flavor, but I’ve never been one of these guys who’s never happiest unless they’ve got a mouthful of something that could eat through the Nostromo‘s hull…
24. Can I get you a drink? None of those overly sweet, fruity-girly drinks! Jameson’s Irish whiskey, preferably on the rocks but neat will do if you have no ice. A draught pint of Guinness is always tasty. For something lighter, I like Utah’s own 1st Amendment Lager. And you can’t beat James Bond’s favorite, a vodka martini with two olives, when you’re trying to look debonair.
25. Red wine or white? I know naught of wine.
26. Favorite dessert? I like a sliver of good key-lime pie (good meaning “not a big slab of Cool Whip with a lime twist on top, like you get at Village Inn”), or some home-made raspberry ice cream after a summer barbecue.
27. The perfect nightcap? Hmm… some nice cookies and milk? Or perhaps, in cold weather, a homemade Peppermint Patty…

Hm… I appear to have quite the yen for junk food, don’t I? That could explain my awesome manly physique…