25 Foods I'm Thankful For

Thanksgiving falls on November 25th this year. It's been a while since that 25 Things meme came around. Let's go!

In no particular order, 25 Foods I'm Thankful For and probably could not (and/or would not want to) live without:

1. Condensed milk. In Vietnamese iced coffee, of course. In any coffee, really. It was a revelation the first time I had shaved ice with bits of fruit, served with a squeeze bottle of condensed milk. Genius. Perfection. I could eat it by the spoonful. Sometimes I do. That's why I haven't opened the can in the cupboard yet.
2. Almond Butter. Creamy. Lightly salted. This, too, I find myself eating by the spoonful. I like foods that fit in spoons. I also like foods that lend themselves to both sweet and savory dishes. Sweet? Spread over toast, sprinkle with cinnamon, add a dollop of blueberry preserves. Magic. Savory? Cook spaghetti noodles. Or any kind of wheat-noodle. While the noods are hot, add big helping of almond butter and soy sauce, and a not-too-conservative dash of sesame oil. Follow with your Asian (or not) pepper sauce of choice. Dinner.
3. Half & half. Another item that lends itself to coffee augmentation. I can't help it. Since it's hard to eat by the spoonful, I don't. Sometimes I'm tempted to drink it by the glass. Shots of it would be nice. But I stick to coffee. I should become an athlete again. So that I can drink it by the glass without feeling guilty.
4. Pomegranates. They're pretty. They're sweet. They're sometimes tangy. They're mysterious-looking. They're the stuff of myth and legend (literally). And after a day of cream puffs, rich potatoes au gratin, and general glut, they allow me to forget for a minute that I've devoured a week's worth of calories within a few hours. Almost.
5. Black Pepper. Or, really, the four-pepper blend that I put into the peppermill a good friend gifted me a few years ago. I love being able to regulate the grind. I love the heat. I love-- I don't know. Black pepper is so ubiquitous that it's hard for me the describe the flavor. It's an earthy kind of fire. 
6. Red Pepper Flake. It's not just for pizza. I don't feel right making any Italian pasta dish without a pinch of this in the oil along with the garlic and onion. A few weeks ago I forgot that my shaker was broken and accidently dumped 2 tablespoons into one serving of pseudo rice pilaf. I fed it to a gal with Louisiana blood. It caused her pain. She approved.

The Goodness of Jamie Oliver

Now a decade beyond his days as The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver is still at it, at as ambitious a pace as ever.

He has been criticized for all of his branding, his restaurants, his seemingly gimmicky product lines. I'd have lost respect for him if much of the work he's done didn't seem motivated by a genuine desire to help people eat better. And by "better," I don't mean lavish meals or making exact measurements or finding the exactly-right gadget-- I mean helping people learn about food and to build a real relationship with food beyond intake.

I don't just like Jamie Oliver for his catch phrases or his blond hair. I like him because he seems truly excited about food, about showing people how accessible it can be, and doesn't make too much of a fuss about cooking. While I can appreciate the exactitude with which some cooking shows demonstrate recipes, it doesn't strike a chord with me the same way at all.

He's done a lot of shows since The Naked Chef. He has a veritable empire of products, books, shows--even a magazine. His Wikipedia entry is extensive.

Yet the theme from the very first Naked Chef still resonates in everything that has come since. The title sequence of The Naked Chef has him as a rascally young twenty-something with a big mop of blond hair laying on a sofa rather indolently saying "Naked's what I call my way of cookin'... It's gotta be fresh, it's gotta be fun, it's gotta be fast, it's gotta be tasty.--It's not me, it's the food!" Each episode of practically every show of his that I've ever watched (and that's nearly all of them) is bent on making cooking seem like just that-- fast, fun, tasty.

The best way I can think to describe his way of cooking and teaching is that it is just utterly no-stick-up-yer-ass methodology. His hands get dirty. He never makes things seem complicated-- he just does them, maybe says something is a little tricky, but he never, ever makes cooking anything but accessible. At least for me.