Top Meals of all time

One perk of being unemployed is that I can spend time refining my domestic skills. Such as cooking. Brandon and I have made commitments to learn to being above average cooks, and so far so good.

When I came back to NY from home I came up here with a cooler filled with meats. Chicken, some meat pasta sauce, a whole frozen chicken and 2 1/2 pounds of salmon. So I've been planning out some recipes.

Tonight's menu was so delicious, it got me thinking about some of my top all time meals.

Let me try and explain tonight's experience:

Honey-Cajun Fried Chicken + Phillie's game - 2 boneless thighs and 2 chicken legs. I marinated the chicken with honey and garlic seasoning, and let it sit for about an hour. I made a flour mix with cayene pepper, lemon pepper, red pepper and black pepper. Then it was just a matter of pan frying them in some nice oil.

Add a whole sweet potato, coated with brown sugar, and a bowl of peas and corn, with some garlic seasoning, and you have a spectacular meal.

Now add in Game 5 of the NLCS. As I take a sweet and spicy and so delicious bite into a thigh, Jimmy Rollins hits a lead off home run. The game is still going on, but the Phillies winning their first NL Pennant since 1993 would make this arguably tops on the following list.

Top Meals of All Time:

1. Shwarma, hummus, salad, pita, no plates - A couple summers ago I went on my Birthright trip. Perhaps my favorite night was the night we spent in a Bedouin camp. Sitting on the ground, using your pita as a plate and filling it with the most tender, succulent beef/lamb, with the eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, hummus. 2 of them later, and spending the rest of the night smoking hukkah with Bedouins making conversation in a combination of Hebrew and English, one of the best nights I've ever had.

2. Big Mac, it's a big deal for me - I keep Kosher. I always have. This basically means I don't eat meat in fast food. So I've spent my entire life eating fish sandwiches at McDonalds, bean burritos at Taco Bell and tuna at Subway. But in Israel, all meat is Kosher, thus, McDonalds is kosher. I've had 2 Big Macs in my time so far, and they are amazing. There really is no greater pleasure than ordering a Big Mac with a large Coke. I thoroughly enjoy it and will do so in the future.

3. Yom Kippur break fast, 8th grade - The more I think about this, the more I realize most of these meals will be somehow religion based, thus proving that Jews are all about food. Anyway, after Yom Kippur (the holiest day of the Jewish year) you eat a light meal, because you've been fasting all day. This meals bagels, blintzes, maybe fish. But when you're 13 and you're fasting for the first time, you don't realize why this is. I had bagels with white fish, cheese blintzes, cookies, cake...and I felt fantastic...until the day after. The easiest way to learn how to eat after a fast is to remember that stomach ache of the next day. I still remember those blintzes being the best I've ever had...at least at the time.

4. First meal as a college graduate - Ben's Deli, right after the Tisch graduation. This meal had the added bonus of being with the Schuldbergs, a nice delight and fun experience of being there for their first Ben's experience. Ben's has outdone the 2nd Ave. Deli in my family's eyes over the years between portion size, price and quality of meat. To celebrate being a real person, I had the following: a pastrami burger with fries. That would be a giant hamburger topped with hot pastrami. It's as good and fattening and filling as it sounds. After that meal, I felt like a real person.

The Phillies are winning 3-0 at the current moment, making this current meal very popular.

Go Phillies.