One of my friends I'm visiting lives 5 minutes from Shapiro's in Carmel. Mmmmm...

Please, oh please eat a pastrami on light rye for me, a small amount of yellow (not that hideous brown stuff) mustard. Nothing else. Well,maybe a Dr. Brown's Cream Soda.

Another two for me relating to meat.

1. Ground beef MUST be fully cooked but still juicy
2. Steaks/Prime Rib MUST be hot/warm throughout but still pinkish in the middle and pink around the bone(s).

Oh, you wouldn't enjoy eating with me then... pastrami on white or wheat, with mayo and onion, and some sweet tea to wash it down. Excellent :D

24. "Mustard" means -- and only means -- yellow mustard. No brown, foofified frenchie stuff.

25. Despite the signal culinary achievements of the South (the sausage biscuit, grits, country ham ^ , the hush puppy, fried catfish) there is one place the region is sadly benighted: ice tea is to be served with no sugar. If I wanted it sweet, I would put sugar in it. And, at the other end of the pretentiousness spectrum, mostly found in "fusion" restaurants where the portions are tiny and consist of things that are only marginally food, when I ask for tea I want regular, brown, 'Murican tea -- I don't want hints of raspberry or foofoo fruits.

Sure I would. We can share. I'll eat the pastrami. You eat the other stuff.

A couple more things...
Eggs must be thoroughly cooked. And I usually only eat them if I prepare them or watch them being prepared. The little white stringy thing must be removed. (It's a mental thing).
Steaks, or most all beef, must be medium at the most. Deep pink/red, juicy. Mooing is optional.
Yes, yes, yes.

That's the egg's umbilical cord. Or something like that. :)

Those places which have said that they won't prepare beef rare are places I leave immediately. I've had that happen just a few times. They clearly buy cheap meat and thus have to have rules about cooking beef through and through otherwise their customers would get sick.

26. This is the perfect hamburger: first slice bun(s) in half, butter them, apply garlic salt. Put aside to take with you to the grill. Shape ground beef into a thick patty. Cook over a very hot charcoal and hickory chip fire, turning as little as possible to keep outside charred but not burnt-to-a-crisp. The burger is done when it is still red in the middle and charred on the outside and cooked a little ways in from the surface. Remove from grill. Take the buns you have brought with you and place on the grill where the burgers were, buttered-side down. Toast on the grill for no more that 15 seconds. Then assemble burger: bottom bun on which you put a dollop of mustard and -- if feeling adventurous -- a dollop of a good barbecue sauce, then the patty, then unwrap a slice of American processed cheese food that is just taken out of the refrigerator. (Note: this is the only possible acceptable use of this slab o' yellow chemicals. On any other occasion it is nasty. The good news is that if you don't grill too often, a package of 8 wrapped slices will last a year in the fridge). Quickly add good potato chips (no foofoo flavored chips) to the plate. Eat burger immediately. The goal (a la the textural contrast rule) is to experience the difference between the hot burger and the cold cheese.

If the occasion and ingredients for such perfection are not at hand, any of these rules can be adapted -- except under no circumstances should the cheese ever be melted on the hamburger while it is cooking.

THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!!

As a native of the "north", I hate having to specifically ask for "unsweet tea" here south of the Mason-Dixon... (I am now Pavlovian trained and do so even north of it too, by habit) and then half the time, they still give you sweet tea. No sugar, no equal, no pink stuff... perhaps a fresh wedge of lemon is all it needs. Oh, lots of ice too. Iced tea isn't lukewarm tea.

This is a great thread... a few of my food fetishes...

No runny eggs... runny eggs are gross to me.

No white bread. Rye or Italian/French (closest to white I'll do).

I'm doing better on eating beef with pink in it. My wife likes it medium rare, so I had to learn to grill that way for her. I just cook my a bit more now instead of medium well, I'm down to medium. London Broils have very appealing to me in the past year or so, especially if they've been marinated for a couple of days first.

Since figuring out I have a corn allergy, I've totally changed my eating style. No more fast food... not a lot of junk food. Well, exceptions like In-N-Out on the left coast where everything is made fresh.

No powdered cow in my coffee. Milk, real cream or half/half, or powdered milk are acceptable, no non-dairy stuff. Real coffee, real moo in it. Really bothered me around here when Hardees (I can eat some of their breakfast items) changed their coffee creamer to a liquid non-dairy creamer.

You know some places require it by law.

I could definitely dine with Tennisbum and cblaisd ^

Oh yeah, I have my own:

1) No raw onion shall ever touch my food or my plate;

2) "New England" or "Boston" (an iteration usually found west of the Continental Divide) clam chowder shall NEVER, EVER contain carrots, pimentos, or any vegetables whose colors are found in the ROY part of the spectrum;

3) Do what you want with your coffee at home but Dunkin Donuts coffee is best light & sweet (i.e., regular);

4) No Miracle Whip, ever (even on fries in Quebec);

5) Sweet & low only for iced tea (dissolves best & has best flavor);

6) When hosting a party, you can never have too much ice;

7) Tostadas are meant to be eaten whole by picking them up with your fingers (like a burger);

8) The less toppings on a pizza, the better;

9) No lemons with my seafood, thank you; and

10) Fried clams are meant to be eaten as "whole belly"; otherwise, what's the point?

27. Biscuits and gravy (another excellent thing given to us by the South) is (are?) to be eaten only when there is sufficient black pepper (about 1/4 of shaker of pepper per biscuit) available to top it.


Except coconut snow cones.

Even better: simmer the soup down until it's got virtually no liquid. Remove ucky green and orange things leaving only meat-with-a-hint-of-broth. Put into pastry crust, put a top crust on, and bake. Eat liberally with fresh ground pepper.

OK, and 4' 8" tall? :)