Toilet paper, eggs and mayonnaise

By DON FOWLER
Posted 4/23/20

If you were marooned on a desert island, what one food would you choose? Remember the old parlor game where you had to choose your favorite food, book, drink and person to make life manageable? Well, here we are, quarantined or confined,

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Toilet paper, eggs and mayonnaise

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If you were marooned on a desert island, what one food would you choose?

Remember the old parlor game where you had to choose your favorite food, book, drink and person to make life manageable?

Well, here we are, quarantined or confined, longing for lobster, reading “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare,” longing for Albert Einstein or Jesus to share our social distancing.

But what about the other question of major importance – what condiment would you choose?

Polls have been conducted, and that ugly vegetable derivative, ketchup (or catsup as some prefer), always comes out on top, followed by mustard.

Down the bottom of the list is my favorite: Mayonnaise.

I could never figure out why the tasty, creamy condiment, which enhances so many foods like eggs, tuna, chicken and BLTs, isn’t at the top of the list.

Perhaps it is because people don’t know how to spell it.

Perhaps their parents fed them a cheaper, sweeter substitute – salad dressing – which omits the most important ingredient, egg yolk.

Mayonnaise is made with vegetable oil, egg yolk, lemon juice, vinegar and seasonings. Then it is emulsified and blended into one of the finest tasting food products on the face of the earth.

Mayonnaise is used in fine dressings like hollandaise sauce and tartar sauce.

Back to my one food choice. Lobster, steak, shrimp, corn on the cob?

No! Potatoes! Then I could add my favorite condiment, plus eggs, celery and onions, and live on potato salad, certainly the finest invention ever conceived by the human brain.

Hellman’s is my mayonnaise of choice. I don’t mean this as a blatant product endorsement – it was what I was raised on and a major contribution to my mother’s coleslaw.

Type in “mayonnaise” on Google and you will find dozens of sites extolling its virtues. Hellman’s even has its own site, featuring a mayonnaise recipe of the week.

So next time you go out for bread, milk and toilet paper, be sure to add mayonnaise to your list.

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