re: What is your Food Philosophy?

My philosophy?s This is more like a rant, but....

No boiled green things. Ever. Also applies to certain non-green things like yellow squash. I grew up thinking I hated vegetables, but as it turned out, I only hated the ones my mother (and all her relatives) cooked. It was an eye opening experience to finally try real (or at least "real Amercanized") Chinese food in my early twenties and discover what vegetables could really be.

No cornbread. It's disgusting. It can make a good dressing or stuffing, but in those cases other sources of moisture and flavor have been added to make it better, and if you get it moist enough without becoming watery it works well for that. Other than that, it's just more dry, coarse cornbread. It is particularly disgusting to watch someone crumble up their cornbread and put the mushy boiled green things mentioned above in it. Revolting.

No microwaves. They ruin the taste of everything they touch.

No food out of a box. No rice mixes, no mac and cheese out of a box, no just heat and add water side dishes. One exception: most cake mixes taste better than most homemade cakes because most homemade cakes are so dry and coarse. Don't know why, I'm not a big desert maker so I haven't cracked the code on that one, but I did go through a significant effort to make good Toll House Cookies and learned that the same recipe executed in a slightly different order using a slightly different methods makes a tremendously better product, though with significantly greater effort. I suspect that a lot of recipes people used are dumbed down to make them more popular.

Opening a jar or a can and heating something up is not cooking.

Overcooked meat sucks. I realize that some people simply can't stand the thought of even a trace of pink being present at the table they are eating at, and I understand being picky like that (see the cornbread abomination above), but please don't incinerate a good cut of meat and expect me to eat it. Let's just boil some hotdogs instead, or maybe it's a manwhich night.

Iodized salt tastes metallic. Kosher salt, sea salt, Himalayan pink salt, mediterranean flaked salt, Lawry's seasoned salt.... there are so many options.

Black Pepper should only be eaten freshly ground. Yes, it's effort, but it is totally worth it and gets better every time you go through the effort.

The best hams are simply labeled "Ham". If you then take it and bake it at 350 degrees F for twelve hours until it is dry and shriveled, you'd probably be better off with one labeled "ham and water product". You're not likely to be able to tell the difference between them at the end and the second one is much cheaper.

Every time I go grocery shopping I think about how much easier my life would be if I could eat pre-prepared foods, but every time I eat something like that I am reminded of the last time I went to a Krystal's restaurant in 1988. Yep, I think that's still sitting in my gut.


Edit: forgot one. Always get a whole chicken and cut it up yourself. Chicken is always better on the bone and skin on. Look for the smallest chicken, it's always better. 3.5 lbs is best, if you can find it. 5 lbs is rubbery.