I clicked on "America's Favorite Foods" from Reader's Digest, and now I'm hungry! You'll probably be craving at least one or two of these after you look them over. Tiramisu (my friend Donna's favorite dessert) is not on the list, but French fries are. And so are hamburgers, which I thought would be #1. Nope.
Added around 1:00 p.m.: I just learned that today is World Chocolate Day! I had lunch with friends, so I'll go eat the other half of a chocolate bar I already have on hand.
What's your favorite food? My very favorite is crispy fried okra, the way my mother used to make it — the way my friend Donna learned to make it, even though she thought she hated okra because she had only eaten boiled okra.
Jeff Davis, owner of Shuford's BBQ near Chattanooga, makes perfect fried okra. I would love to have some right now! But back to RD's list. Which of the foods on that list is a favorite of yours? I couldn't settle on one, so maybe I need to find a Greek-American-Japanese-Mexican-Italian restaurant when I go out to eat. My mouth is watering as I work on this blog post. I'm sorry to say that crispy fried okra is not on that list of favorite foods in the United States, but I like lots of other foods, too.
Onion rings come in at #18 on RD's list, but the onion rings pictured here are from Nikki's, one of my favorite restaurants in Chattanooga. (My top favorite place to eat in Chattanooga, of course, is Shufords see above). Nikki's has wonderful onion rings!
Oh, no! As I looked for a photo of Nikki's to use here, I learned the place has been razed and replaced by small condos. Oh, well, it also says it closed in March 2020, the same month we went into lockdown here because of the pandemic. I found a good photo and want to save it because I had many wonderful meals there. Can you read the signs along the roof that say "SOUTHERN FRIED CHICKEN" and "GULF COAST SHRIMP"?
1. My favorite view is either from Signal Mountain looking south across the Tennessee River and Chattanooga (above) or from Lookout Mountain looking north across the Tennessee River and Chattanooga (below). Do you see a pattern here? I first posted the photo below in 2013.
2. My favorite comfort food is extra crispy fried okra. Jeff at Shuford's BBQ knows I like it extra crispy and makes it perfectly. When I visited Chattanooga in April, Sandra asked where I wanted to eat lunch on my birthday. Not only did I get extra crispy okra, but Jeff also took me out to his van and gave me a Shuford's shirt like the one he was wearing. If you are in Chattanooga, I highly recommend Shuford's BBQ, now located in the old Southern Restaurant building in Red Bank.
3. My favorite genre of music is classical music, but my VERY favorite piece is Mozart's Bassoon Concerto. I've posted it several times on this blog, and this is a good short version. If the video doesn't work, here's the YouTube link.
4. My favorite theological writer is Marcus Borg, especially his The Heart of Christianity, published in 2003. I reviewed this book ten years ago (click on the title for that blog post). Borg, who died in 2015, often wrote with John Dominic Crossan, most of whose books are also on my shelves. I still need to read The Search for Jesus: Modern Scholarship Looks at the Gospels (1994) by Borg, Crossan, and Stephen Patterson, that was edited by Hershel Shanks. When I bought this book, years ago, I'd never heard of Patterson. But now his 2018 book The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism is on top of the stack beside my chair, waiting to be read. Now both books are on the stack.
