THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

Time for the inevitable: if I'm going to write about food, then at some point I'm probably going to have to name my favorite. My favorite of all the foods!

(Now I know how Noah DID NOT feel when all the little animals were marching into his ark. I mean, imagine if he had to choose just one pair among such gorgeous diversity! What I'm saying is that my task here is MORE DIFFICULT THAN NOAH'S!)

But I figure I should name THE ULTIMATE IN DELICIOUS, AKA EMPIRICALLY DELICIOUS early in this journey that we're having together, because then you can use my favorite food as a baseline for all my other judgements. Like a litmus test, if you will.

Will you?

Okay, here it is:

It's Breyer's All Natural Vanilla Ice Cream.

It is the MOST DELICIOUS FOOD ON EARTH. EMPIRICALLY.

It is the food that I have eaten more consistently, and with more consistent pleasure, than any other in my life. I was weaned on it, and I hope that when I am an old lady, without teeth again, it will be my last meal.

Here are its ingredients: Milk, Cream, Sugar, Natural Flavors (used to say Vanilla).

When you open a new carton, there are little black flecks of "Natural Flavors," which used to be little black flecks of Vanilla.

Those flecks are DELICIOUS. To my EYES!

So go home, Ben and Jerry's with your liquid-sugar and cloying chunkiness! Get out of my room, Haagen-Daz with your made up name and egg-yolky richness! I'll take my light and airy Breyer's, a colder, more comforting version of sweet, steamed vanilla milk, any day. I'll take it every day, because it is, as the aforementioned proves, the MOST DELICIOUS OF ALL THE FOODS.

I will never stop loving it in my mouth. And I will always put it there.