Nature's Most Perfect Food - 2014

In previous years, I have summarily pronounced Tabasco as "Nature's Most Perfect Food." This year, with the possibility of shaking things up, I'm putting it in a head to head competition with a couple other great contenders. We'll see how it fares.

According to Wikipedia, "Food is that stuff we eat." If that's true, and I believe it is, we have to reason that some of it's likely to be better. That's what we're wanting nail down today, not only which is better but so good it deserves the sterling appellation of "Nature's Most Perfect Food -- 2014."

This year, I have three finalists, which I will list in alphabetical order, double-checked for complete impartiality: Bacon, Milk, and Tabasco. The competition will be fair, but I must insist, my decision will be final, certainly through the rest of the year, and until such time, if ever, that my taste buds and/or the inscrutable criterion "Extreme Unction" change.

Milk is a weird one, the beverage of mammals, produced right straight from bodies of the female variety. I'm given to understand that milk was my first meal, and was what I subsisted on through much of my first couple years. That's awesome to me, that I was so stuck on one thing. All I wanted was more milk, apparently. I still love it.

Bacon is a food we hear a lot about these days. At the current time, there seems to be a huge bacon kick with the public. Of our three foods, bacon is the one that fluctuates the most wildly in price. Cows regularly put out milk and it goes to market, but hog farmers know they've got food-gold, like oil, so the prices are always up and down. And Tabasco is regular as rain -- regular as rain used to be, before global warming. We'll just say now it's regular as Antarctic ice calving.

I want to underscore one other thing about bacon, that my love for it has nothing to do with jumping on today's wild bacon bandwagon; I've always had it. I love opening a pack of bacon. It's in there like the pages of a book, and you know it's going to be a taste adventure. Plus, hogs have always been a personal favorite.

I've known lots of people who raised hogs, and they depended on people like me for their income. I've seen freshly slaughtered hogs, not a good sight. I've heard hogs being castrated, not a good sound. But I figure any animal that's willing to go through all that, I'm not going to turn away their meat. One of the weirdest hog sights I've ever seen was something like 1,000 baby pigs all together in one room. Just a writhing, seething, heaving, disgusting mass of pig. I remember saying, "Get me the hell out of here!"

Milk and bacon, coming from animals, don't sound immediately desirable. But I focus on the finished product, a big glass of cold milk and a plate of nicely cooked bacon. Milk poured well before its spoil date, and bacon not fried to death, but not undercooked. So chewy, so flavorful, so nutritious, so much enjoyable fat that you can't help loving it. Washed down with cold milk. I always loved getting the little milk cartons in school. They only gave us white back in those days, unlike the current more-pampered generation. 

Then there's my old friend Tabasco. I've made it well known over the years, in real life and on this blog, that I love Tabasco. I've slathered so much Tabasco on things over the years, they really should make me an honorary citizen of Avery Island, my own little cottage, etc. Once I sneezed and had Tabasco way up my sinuses, nearly burning out my system. At the time I thought I would die, but I lived to laugh about it later.

These days, though, I've had a harder time with Tabasco. So I'm using less. I seem to be getting more sensitive to it as my aging molecules wither and die. With my mind I love it the same, but my molecules counsel restraint. I don't know what to do. I've always bulldozed ahead with my mind, but it's foolish to cross molecules. If they say they're tearing, straining, and dying, I need to listen, don't I? Or I could simply deny that bad things can happen, like with global warming, and press on full speed ahead. Who's ever heard of negative consequences from anything?

The way I'll decide the contest this year is according to the principle of Extreme Unction. Which of the three foods puts the most (and best) unction in my extremities? Right away, it's a contest. Milk, being my earliest (and only) food, obviously kept my extremities nice and rosy. It had no competition and did it alone. But having no competition also suggests an unfair advantage. As far as serving up unction today, yes, I will say milk still does. However, the old advantage is gone. Milk supplements, it's not the main thing.

Bacon has tons of unction. And my extremities find it satisfying in virtually every way. The one downside of bacon is that it often overloads my system with guilt. I'm always worrying, Have I cooked too much? Will I get fatter than I want? Should I eat it every meal? Is it bad for me? Still, just thinking of bacon there on the paper towel, the grease being quickly wicked away, leaving those lean strips in a seductive spread eagle pose, I'm always pleased and, even now, feel a tingling in my extremities.

Tabasco also carries a lot of unction, up the ying yang unction. Tabasco even makes me feel proud. I know Grandpa would love to see his boy eating a ton of Tabasco. He used to put it on my plate, a drop, and laugh himself to tears watching me trying to get it past my teeth. Then, after his passing, somehow his tolerance of it was transferred to me. So I'm no longer the boy but the man! Like Leonardo's man, my extremities are totally stretched out, and Tabasco hits them all, a bulls-eye every time. But Tabasco, fantastic as it is, is like milk in this one way, supplementary. Yes, occasionally I put it on a plate and lick it up, but not very often anymore. Because of age, the molecules, etc.

All three of the great foods have amazing unction, and each one's unction touches the extremities in ways hard to believe, or they wouldn't even be in the running. I tip my hat to all three. But the one food this year that puts the most Extreme Unction in my extremities, and therefore will hold the title forever of "Nature's Most Perfect Food -- 2014" is going to be  .... Bacon!

Just The Cutest Tabasco Packet

Look at this cute little Tabasco sauce packet. I didn't know they made these. I noticed the place I go to breakfast doesn't have bottles of Tabasco anymore. So I asked about it, and the guy directed me to a container of these little packets.

"How cute!" I said. And  how convenient as well. I'm always a little nervous about condiments in bottles in restaurants, because you don't know what the last guy might have done with it. When given a choice, I always take the freshest, fullest one.

But these little packets, that's exactly what I need! And the fact that they're so darned cute, that just adds to my delight.

Remember, I'm the guy who advocates that Tabasco is good for a person's health, speaking for myself. You can read about my Longevity Diet, which centers on using lots of Tabasco. In that post, I predict that I will live to be 158 and still have what it takes to date 20-year-old women. Or, I should say, 20-year-old men, whichever I happen to be in the mood for at that age. They'll be like, "You're a great lover for a 90-year-old!" And I'll say, "90-year-old, my ass! I'm 158 and I'm gonna be dead next week!"

OK, let's review what I did for breakfast, along with one odd quirk. The guy directed me to the container with the cute little Tabasco packets. In the immediate fever of my surprise, I reached down and took three, even though, upon reflection, I only needed two. But what to do with the third! This is the quirk: I'm funny when it comes to things like this. Like if it's jelly, I hate to waste it. There's this little container of jelly, and I think of how much it took to make it and that it should not be wasted. The same with even salt and pepper packets. Just imagine how I must feel about Tabasco, God's most perfect food...

I had the third packet there, yet didn't feel like having three on my eggs. So what to do with it? I could take it over and put it back in the container. But then I thought, No, because I've had my fingers all over it. And even though I don't have any diseases, someone might see me and be upset. I think I'd be upset if I saw a guy putting packets back in the container, because, again, I don't know what he did with them.

So under those circumstances I did the only thing I could do, which was to take it with me. There's one obvious benefit to that: I scanned it for this post. But the other more important benefit is, when it comes time to eat Tabasco, which I do all the time, I'll have this little packet to use first. In terms of physical size, it's pretty small, really small, but in terms of longevity, who knows?, it might add a few days to my lifespan. And that's too good to waste.

Longevity -- The Tabasco Sauce Diet

I've been saying for quite a while that "Tabasco sauce is nature's most perfect food." Most recently, just this morning, I said it again while out for breakfast. I love it on eggs.

I love it on several things, tacos and pork chops being the biggies that come to mind.

I've never drunk it straight from the bottle, which we were talking about at breakfast. But I have put it on my finger or palm and enjoyed a bit of raw sauce like that.

Tabasco's never done me any harm, except once, when I got it up my nasal passages, documented at this link. I even have pictures of myself in the minutes after it happened, showing me with a really weird look, but I can't post those now or ever.

The rest of my Tabasco experiences have all been good. Except it seems more recently that when my tongue gets hot with it that it's really hot. Which I still love, so I guess that's not a negative thing.

OK, the idea came up today, what if a guy drank a whole bottle of Tabasco sauce everyday? And my thought was, since it's nature's most perfect food, that there might be an interesting effect on your body. Such as perhaps giving you incredible longevity, if you mixed in a little faith and the power of positive thinking. It might be like the old Russians who eat yogurt and live to be 135. Or the old guys who drink a shot of whiskey everyday and live to be 110.

I suggested you might go way beyond the yogurt and whiskey guys by decades or even centuries. Like me. I'm 58 now, but I might've died when I was 28 if it hadn't been for a fairly moderate consumption of Tabasco. Because I'm picturing it down there keeping my stomach and other organs protected, killing whatever might need killed.

Like I said in 2009 in a series of tweets:

The other day I looked in the mirror and my face was actually red. So that's some weird corpuscle action going on.

I have the theory that Tabasco sauce is good for you. That it kills something. You know, whatever. I'm not a doctor. Just a theorist.

I'm still "just a theorist." All I know is I've been alive and haven't died yet, and I attribute most of that to Tabasco, along with a very cautious nature.

I'm not giving links to these old posts, too lazy. But I had another post on this, also in 2009:

I have a theory, no actual research involved, that Tabasco could probably cure disease. Big stuff too, like herpes, cancer, all that stuff that supposedly can't be defeated. My theory: sprinkle some Tabasco on it and the bacteria will have to die.

I'm very used to Tabasco sauce. I started out having a tiny drop once in a while at my grandparents. Back then we must have stretched out a bottle for years. I don't know. Now I slather stuff with it, both on top and for dipping. But no matter how "used" to it I am, it still has heat that does things to me. Sometimes my hearing gets slightly fuzzy, my nose runs, I'm drinking water.

Because it has these dreadful effects ... that's where I get the idea it can cure disease.

I also used to have a theory that those metal Chinese balls with different gongs in them could cure foot pain, so obviously my theories rely on a lot of wishful thinking. 

Notice all the physiological effects Tabasco causes. It's great stuff. But once again I concluded by saying I'm a theorist with "wishful thinking."

But let's say I'm right. And let's say I actually were to drink a whole bottle a day. I'm 58. Then someday I'd be 158 and still going strong. All my non-Tabasco-drinking friends and family members would have died, and there I'd still be, probably not a friend in the world. Or maybe I'd have lots of friends. Because who wouldn't want to be friends with a 158-year-old guy?

The Tabasco might even help me maintain my virility, so I'd be able to attract even 20-year-olds -- ladies and guys. I'd say, "Hey, they're legal, even if I'm old enough to know better!" Actually, I might say, "You all look cute. And I wouldn't mind doing you, but I can't respect anyone who'd date a 158-year-old man. You have to be crazy ... or a gold digger, and in my case, thanks to Tabasco, I'm not going to die, so you'll be with me forever. Poor you."

What I'd really like to have is someone my old age. Even a mate 90-years-old would be too young. I'd either be robbing the cradle or the undertaker. Depending on their Tabasco habits.

The only thing that would kill me is if the McIlhenny Company stopped making Tabasco. Although if I got wind of that, I'd stock my basement with about 400 years worth, or more! However long I felt like living at the time.