Baked potatos; corn muffins; brussle spouts; corn on the cob; chili rellenos; pizza. Oranges; watermellon; cherries; strawberries; apricots. Just think of what life would be like without them! The horror! The horror! No more crusty French bread; no more sharp cheddar cheese between sourdough, nestled with pickles, tomatos, onions, leafy raw vegetables, and peppers, sweetly resting upon a thin, warm layer of spicy mustard. What paucity of bliss and delight the world would be without it! Just think: no more crinkely potato chips, dipped in green onion dip; no more corn chips and salsa. Good Goddess, the very thought makes me shudder with dread!

I've eaten in a great many restaurants, in several countries. Indeed, I am on a quest for the world's finest chili relleno and I won't rest until I eat one from every Mexican restaurant on the planet. So far, I like Olamendi's the best, but there have been some pretty good ones elsewhere. And some goddamned horrible ones, such as one may find in Colorado (USA).

I've eaten baked clam and breadfruit in a coconut juice sauce, baked in banana leaves in a dirt pit lined with stones; I've eaten roasted grasshoppers and snake while in Scouting; Hell, I've even eaten my own cooking! Therefore I am qualified to critique food (smile!).

Food comes in every conceivable form: some cultures eat stuff I would not step in with hip boots. Other cultures would shudder if they saw me eating the garbage that I do. It all depends on what they are acustomed to. In the "'stans" (Pakistan, Turkistan, Afghanistan, etc., etc.) if you are a nice person, you get to eat the goat's head as an honor; in Fiji you are the one to drink the Kava first as an honor. (Personally, I'd take the Kava.) The French eat stuff most of us try to fumigate from our gardens, attics, and basements / cellers.

I don't eat meat. Animal flesh. Blood. Yuck, yuck, yuck! Studies of primates, specifically the Great Apes other than humans, show that most will eat meat every chance they get (it is often used as a bribe from male chimpanzies to female chimpanzies, if the former is not strong enough to rape the latter (which the former often do)), so I'm not one of those vegetarians who think (let alone believe) that humans "should not" eat meat, or are not evolved to eat meat. Our teeth clearly show that we evolved to eat whatever we can get into our mouths. But humans do not have to eat animal flesh. We're smart enough to get all of food requirements from plants.

The following links are pages to restaurant reviews that I have done.

• Olamendi's The family restaurant in Capistrano Beach, Southern California. Excellent Mexican food. Good prices. Good people running the place. Lard free!
• Wahoo's Fish Tacos Cheep, quick, and rather good most of the time.
• McDonald's Pure crap. Worse than not eating at all. Worse than starving. Worse than being hacked to pieces with a claymore by a drunk, sheep-enamored Highlander.

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